An elegantly written study of poor women in the US. After
conducting years of observation of and conversation with women and
girls in such settings as health clinics, schools, and sheltering
programs, Dodson, a fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy
Institute, presents a thoroughly sympathetic profile of American
women and female children who live below the federal poverty line.
Poor young girls, she contends, are often unable to imagine
themselves in any other role than mother, largely because they have
been obliged to help their own mothers raise children and keep
house from an early age. Lacking parental support for any other
sort of life, low-income daughters see no other option for
themselves besides the very same grind of early parenthood,
domestic servitude, and habitual fatigue (as well as welfare
dependency and depression). Although many of the females
interviewed here are eager to sustain an ongoing relationship with
a man, that likelihood is small; most male partners, Dodson
establishes, disappear before or soon after their children are
born. Those who do hang around are typically abusive, whether
sexually, physically, or both. "The risk of sexual abuse," she
notes, "was seen as an inherent part of a girl's sexual
development." Some poor women are able to move on with their lives
once their children grow up. But the skill required to navigate out
of the welfare system into self-sufficiency is inordinate, and the
women who succeed are rare models of endurance and fortitude. While
Dodson's portrait of the present crisis is disheartening, she is
not bleak about the future. The women she has interviewed suggest
"scores of alternatives to welfare's current policy." A challenge
to current American thinking about the poor and poverty. (Kirkus
Reviews)
A radically new vision of women and girls living below the poverty
line; Lisa Dodson makes a frontal assault on conventional attitudes
and stereotypes of women in poor America and the seriously
misguided "welfare reform" policies of the end of the century.
"I hear Odessa, a thirty-two-year-old woman, speak at a forum on
welfare reform. I ask her about the phrase she used, 'Don't call me
out of name, ' for it seemed to speak for a whole nation of people.
Odessa tells me that women who have no money and no one to stand up
for them get put into a bad position and they get misnamed. Most
often they get called 'welfare mothers' or 'recipients, ' words she
will no longer acknowledge. With millions alongside her, Odessa has
emerged by her own strength and some opportunity, and now she
insists upon naming herself."
While Lisa Dodson was working in a Charlestown factory twenty years
ago, the stories of the women she worked with daily captivated her;
she listened to them speak about harsh lives and their deep
commitment to family and community. It was the beginning of
Dodson's desire to learn the truth and write it down.
For over eight years, Dodson has been documenting the lives of
girls and women-hundreds of white, African-American, Latino,
Haitian, Irish, and other women in personal interviews, focus
groups, surveys, and Life-History Studies. This book is a
crossing--a class crossing--taking readers into fellowship with
people who are seldom invited to speak but who have powerful
stories to tell and who force us to abandon common myths that have
been fed to us by the media about school dropouts, teen pregnancy,
and welfare "cheats." Don't Call Us Out of Name delves deeply into
the realities of their lives, often with surprising and uplifting
stories of commonplace courage, unimaginable strength, and
resourcefulness.
Lisa Dodson does not simply give us the truth about women living in
poverty but offers realistic hope for meaningful policy reform
based on the experience and analysis of the women we have seen so
far only in stereotype and whose voices we have not truly heard.
These women emerge as critical contributors to the creation of
sound, humane public policy.
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