Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class
by Dorothy Allison and Dean Spade and Michelle Tea and Terry Ryan and Meliza Banales and Tatiana De LA Tierra and Bee Lavender and Eileen Myles and Daisy Hernandez and Frances Varian and Joy Castro and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Wendy Thompson and Diane Prima and Terri Griffith and Polyestra and Sailor Holladay and Silas Howard and Lis Goldschmidt and Shell Feijo and Colleen McKee and Cassie Peterson and Tara Hardy and Liliana Hernández and Adassah M. Hill and Tina Fakhrid-Deen and Nikki Levine and María Rivera and Ricky Lee and Shana Kenney and Ida Acton and Siobhan Brooks
While many recent books have thoughtfully examined the plight of the working poor in America, none of the authors of these books is able to claim a working-class background, and there are associated methodological and ethical concerns raised when most of the explicatory writing on how poverty affects women and girls is done by educated, upper-class journalists. It was these concerns that prompted indie icon Michelle Tea--whose memoir The Chelsea Whistle details her own working-class roots in gritty Chelsea, Massachusetts--to collect these fierce, honest, tender essays written by women who can’t go home to the suburbs when their assignment is over. These wide-ranging essays cover everything from stealing and selling blood to make ends meet, to "jumping" class, how if time equals money then being poor means waiting, surviving and returning to the ghetto and how feminine identity is shaped by poverty. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Diane Di Prima, Terri Griffith, Daisy Hernández, Frances Varian, Tara Hardy, Shawna Kenney, Siobhan Brooks, Terri Ryan, and more.
Release Date:
February 5, 2004
