Reply #1: It doesn't have to be the underclass that's taken on:

[flor de jasmim]

it can be any class, any situation, but I agree with you about the need for characters, story and setting.

It's like abstract painting--I have never understood why when an artist throws paint at a canvass or makes a dot of paint, that it is ART, but if I do it, it is not. I want art to be representational in some fashion. With literature I have no patience with a book that just seems to throw the words at me, which is the feeling that some postmodern books give me.

(I'm too tired to sound more coherent.)