Full Description
"Reclaiming Class" offers essays written by women who changed their lives through the pathway of higher education. Collected, they offer a powerful testimony of the importance of higher learning, as well as a critique of the programs designed to alleviate poverty and educational disparity. The contributors explore the ideologies of welfare and American meritocracy that promise hope and autonomy on the one hand, while also perpetuating economic obstacles and indebtedness on the other.Divided into the three sections, "Reclaiming Class" assesses the psychological, familial, and economic intersections of poverty and the educational process. In the first section, women who left poverty through higher education recall their negotiating the paths of college life to show how their experiences reveal the hidden paradoxes of education. Section two presents first person narratives of students whose lives are shaped by their roles as poor mothers, guardian siblings, and daughters, as well as the ways that race interacts with their poverty.Chapters exploring financial aid and welfare policy, battery and abuse, and the social constructions of the poor woman finish the book.
Offering a comprehensive picture of how poor women access all levels of private and public institutions to achieve against great odds, "Reclaiming Class" shows the workings of higher learning from the vantage point of those most subject to the vicissitudes of policy and reform agendas. Vivyan C. Adair is Assistant Professor in the Women's Studies Department at Hamilton College, and Director of The ACCESS Project, which supports low-income parents in their efforts to exit inter-generational poverty through higher education and pre-career employment. Sandra L. Dahlberg is Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston-Downtown.
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction: Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America Vivyan C. Adair and Sandra L. Dahlberg Speech Pathology: The Deflowering of an Accent Laura Sullivan-Hackley Part I: Educators Remember 1. Disciplined and Punished Poor Women, Bodily Inscription, and Resistance through Education Vivyan C. Adair 2. Academic Constructions of "White Trash," or How to Insult Poor People without Really Trying Nell Sullivan 3. Survival in a Not So Brave New World Sandra L. Dahlberg 4. To Be Young, Pregnant, and Black: My Life as a Welfare Coed Joycelyn K. Moody 5. If You Want Me to Pull Myself Up, Give Me Bootstraps Lisa K. Waldner Part II: On The Front Lines 6. If I Survive, It Will Be Despite Welfare Reform: Reflections of a Former Welfare Student Tonya Mitchell 7. Not By Myself Alone: Upward Bound with Family and Friends Deborah Megivern 8. Choosing the Lesser Evil: The Violence of the Welfare Stereotype Andrea S. Harris 9. From Welfare to Academe: Welfare Reform as College-Educated Welfare Mothers Know It Sandy Smith Madsen 10. Seven Years in Exile Leticia Almanza Part III: Policy, Research, And Poor Women 11. Families First-but Not in Higher Education: Poor, Independent Students and the Impact of Financial Aid Sandra L. Dahlberg 12. The Leper Keepers: Front-Line Workers and the Key to Education for Poor Women Judith Owens-Manley 13. "That's Why I'm on Prozac": Battered Women, Traumatic Stress, and Education in the Context of Welfare Reform Lisa D. Brush 14. Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education Vivyan C. Adair About the Contributors
