Tea - Without a net: the female experience of growing up working class

I DIDNT GROW UP POOR, IMPOVERISHED, DEPRIVED . W E GOT BY . W E HAD enough. And its trueI had MTV and Catholic school. No college, though, but who went to college? Kennedys! My mom had money for Depeche Mode tickets when I begged her for them. Other times, no money for a candy bar. Dont you think that if I had it I would give it to you? Really, no money for a candy bar? Really.

We werent broke, though. We were like everyone else in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and certainly better than many, the immigrant families crammed ten to an apartment, on welfare, or the families with a really bad alcoholic drinking all the money away. Our alcoholic dad split, no child support but thats O.K., my mom doesnt want to take nothing from nobody, no handouts, no charity. See? If we were really poor wed need more. Wed be on food stamps, and we were only on them that one time when Ma had a hysterectomy and couldnt work. Ma had to take off her jewelry, the thin, gold chain she wore, laden with little golden charms, a Tweety bird, Nefertiti, #1 Mom. If the case worker saw the gold they might think she was rich. A single mother, a nurse, raising two children in a slummy town, a deadbeat father run out the door, she doesnt think were poor, fears we could actually be mistaken for rich by the workers who grant us our food stamps. Such is the head fuck of class in America.

This book, Without a Net, is important because it actually acknowledges that class exists in America. It investigates the particular intersection of class and gender, and calls into the story additional intersectionalities that complicate and illuminate. In a country where a racist white electorate voted in a fascist billionaire as an answer to their economic woes, a book like this is a lightning bolt of sanity. In a country where everyone, rich and poor, claims to be middle class, denying the reality of class stratification even as it intensifies and the government wages a very clear class war, attacking the voting right, health care, and educational opportunities, this book is radical. It was a necessary book, truth-telling and fearless, when it was first published, and the addition of new voices in this fresh edition makes it even more relevant. The class problem, the problem of poverty and the strange way it is regarded in this country, is not going away, and we need writers from low-income backgrounds breaking through the actual middle-class, often rich viewpoints and experiences that dominate the media. We need to hear about the poor kid who grows up to pass as privileged among her peers. The poor kid who grows up, jumps a class or two, and sags with survivors guilt every day. The anxious persistence of scarcity issues, the PTSD of a low-income childhood. The intersections of fat and poor, of brown or black and poor, of immigrant and poor. Radical, truth-telling magic. It might not be enough to rouse the country from its stupor of denial, ignorance, and hate, but at the very least it can be a lifeline thrown from one broke girl to another, and what a revelation it is to see your experience radiated back at you in a culture that denies you even exist.

The class problem, the problem of poverty and the strange way it is regarded in this country, is not going away.

Im so grateful for the readers and teachers who have kept this book in print all these years. Im grateful to share political community with the writers in this book, to be part of a sisterhood of broke girls. No matter if we grow up and manage to do alright for ourselves, the way history haunts our psyches, the way family can be left behind, it weighs on our hearts.

May this book make its way to a new generation of readers who need it, who learn from it and take solace in it, who use it to counter the lies our culture tells us and inspire their own stories.