In The Melancholia of Class, Cynthia Cruz analyses how this choice between assimilation or annihilation has played out in the lives of working-class musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers – including Amy Winehouse, Ian Curtis, Jason Molina, Barbara Loden, and many more – and the resultant Freudian melancholia that ensues when the working-class subject leaves their origins to ”become someone,” only to find that they lose themselves in the process.