WB NW 2009 - Vermont Humanities Council



Literature to follow up and complement

Welfare Brat: A Memoir by Mary Childers

For further information contact:

Jan Steinbauer, Director of Literacy Programs

jsteinbauer@

802-262-1352

Welfare Brat: A Memoir. VHC has available for loan copies of the memoir as well as a DVD of author Mary Childers’ public presentation in VHC’s First Wednesdays program. “Referencing her own story, [Dr. Mary Childers] discusses paths out of poverty and away from welfare dependence, as well as ethical issues associated with publishing memoirs.”

Memoir/writing our stories and Biography/autobiography:

All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg. Rick Bragg won a Pulitzer Prize for his feature articles at the New York Times. He never forgets his roots and draws on firsthand knowledge of how poverty deforms lives and on his personal belief in the dignity of poor people. His memoir of a poor Southern youth pays tribute to his mother who struggled to raise three sons out of poverty, and his own struggles to forgive his alcoholic father.

Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers. Award-winning children’s book writer Myers tells the story of his own childhood growing up in a poor family in Harlem, discovering his love of books and writing while also living with bullying and the class and racial struggles surrounding him.

Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray. From runaway to Harvard student, Murray tells a powerfully motivational story about turning her life around after growing up the neglected child of drug addicts, and breaking a generational pattern of violence, substance abuse, and homelessness. (View the film From Homeless to Harvard and compare/contrast with the book.)

Couldn’t Keep it to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution (Testimonies from our Sisters) or the sequel,

I’ll Fly Away. For many years, Lamb has run writing workshops for women prisoners at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. In these collections, the women describe how they were imprisoned by abuse, rejection, and their own self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. Yet these are powerful stories of hope and healing, told by writers who have left victimhood behind.

The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers. Struggling high school students, living in the midst of Los Angeles’ poverty and violence, are empowered through reading literature and writing their own stories. (View the film and compare/contrast with the book.)

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. Memoir of a successful professional woman from a poor, dysfunctional family with eccentric, nomadic parents. The prequel, Half Broke Horses, features her grandmother who was a strong, independent woman.

Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos. Award-winning memoir recounting the author’s choice as a young man to help smuggle drugs into the US, and the consequences that followed—both bad and good.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Autobiographical stories of a young Latina girl in Chicago, including her feelings about growing up in poverty and her hopes for the future.

Knots in My Yo-yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid by Jerry Spinelli. Memoir of a child who liked baseball and yo-yos more than books . . . on the way to becoming a writer.

Living up the Street by Gary Soto. Poetic coming-of-age account of growing up in the industrial barrio of Fresno.

When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant. A picture book of her growing up in Appalachia in rural poverty, with strong family connections.

When I Was Your Age: Original Stories About Growing Up, Amy Ehrich, ed. A collection of short memoirs by ten writers who tell a story from their childhood (Katherine Paterson, Walter Dean Myers, etc.)

Resource book: Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg. A celebration of and guide to writing the memoir form, with practical guidance and a variety of exercises.

Poetry:

Poetry books and anthologies can inspire reflecting on one’s life and writing poetry. Female poets could include Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver, Joan Murray (e.g., Poems to Live By in Troubling Times), Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds (Strike Sparks – Selected Poems), and Rita Dove (Mother Love).

Fiction:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Humorous and heartbreaking young adult novel about Junior, a talented cartoonist from an Indian reservation who struggles to rise above his own tragedies to live his dream.

I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson. YA fiction.

A sensitive yet gritty short novel about incest. Two girls: one white, one black; one abused, one protected, both missing their mothers. An unlikely friendship ignites between the two, and, in sharing their differences, both of their lives are transformed.

Just Juice by Karen Hesse. YA fiction. Set in rural Appalachia, the opening image of Ma "spreading grape jelly so thin on the sliced white bread you can hardly find the purple" gives readers an immediate impression of the family's poverty level. Learning disabilities, a difficult pregnancy, an unemployed father, and foreclosure on their house are among the many challenges faced by the resilient protagonist and her large family.

Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff. YA fiction. Two inner-city teen girls struggle toward better lives: a single teen mom is trying to make it, and another teen provides the childcare. One girl's steady support helps the other to bootstrap herself into better times and she, in turn, helps her young friend to clarify her own values. Themes include parental love, sexual harassment, abuse, independence, and the value of education. The Make Lemonade Trilogy includes True Believer and This Full House.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. YA fiction. A gripping story, written in sparse first-person, free-verse poems, of a young girl’s struggle to survive during the dust bowl years.

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. YA fiction. A feisty young female protagonist copes with abandonment by her mother and growing up in foster care.

The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson. YA fiction. A strong young female protagonist takes on the role of parenting her younger brother, with a father in jail and a mother who abandons her children to the care of their great-grandmother, in a setting of rural Vermont poverty with little food. She grows into a stronger self, coming to see herself as one made from the “same stuff as stars.”

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Adult fiction. Set in 1960s South, a coming-of-age story of a girl without a mother, living with an abusive father, who develops positive relationships with a trio of black women.

What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman. YA fiction. A moving story about domestic violence told from a young boy’s perspective — how a child thinks and feels in a situation beyond his control, and how he emerges stronger. A Newbury Honor book.

Fiction Picture Books:

A Chair for My Mother by Vera Williams. After loss from a fire receiving help from their local community, a hard-working mother, daughter and grandmother save toward their dream of a new chair.

An Angel for Solomon Singer by Cynthia Rylant. An elderly man lives in a dreary New York City hotel for men, longing for things he can't have. Amidst his loneliness and poverty, one warm human contact changes him.

Don’t Say Ain’t by Irene Smalls. A girl has difficulties with her best friends in her neighborhood when she begins to attend an advanced school, and she learns from her teacher that different ways of talking are appropriate for at home and at school.

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting. Picture book. A child’s-eye view of the problem of homelessness: a young boy and his father live in an airport terminal.

Something Beautiful by Sharon Dennis Wyeth. In the midst of an urban setting where poverty and violence can be seen, one can also find beauty all around, and inside.

The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills. Set in Appalachia after a little girl’s father dies, the community of local women create a warm coat for her, a coat full of stories.

Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman. A traditional Jewish folktale about family love and ingenuity, and making do with what is at hand.

Tight Times by Barbara Shook Hazen. A family deals with “tight times” and the father’s loss of a job.

Tom by Tomie dePaola. A tale about a relationship between a boy and his grandfather … and a bit of school mischief that ensues.

Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan. A fictional view of an urban soup kitchen and those in need who use its services, as observed by a boy visiting it with his uncle who works there.

Cinderella

Explore cultural images of women and beauty in picture books of the folktale, as found in various cultures, for example:

|Jounah - a Hmong Cinderella |Jewell Reinhart Coburn |Picture book (with authentic Hmong art) |

|Yeh-Hsien Chinese Cinderella |Dawn Casey |(Bilingual Chinese Traditional Character/English) |

|The Korean Cinderella |Shirley Climo |Also The Egyptian Cinderella, The Persian Cinderella |

|Cendrillon |Robet D. San Souci |Caribbean |

|The Talking Eggs |Robert San Souci |African American |

|Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters |John Steptoe |African |

|The Rough-Face Girl |Rafe Martin |Native American (Algonquin) |

For educators, staff, and higher-level readers, recommended by Mary Childers:

Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind The author won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1995 for his stories on Cedric Jennings, a talented black teenager struggling to succeed in one of the worst public high schools in Washington, D.C. Suskind has expanded those features into a full-length nonfiction narrative, following Jennings beyond his high school graduation to college, and delivers a compelling story on the struggles of inner-city life in modern America, with a message about the virtue of perseverance.

Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher. Based on the historical and social events of the West Virginia coal mine wars of 1920-1921, the vivid and heartfelt poems in this book convey the stories of miners and their families. The mountaineers, Italian immigrants, and Black families organized for safe working conditions in opposition to the mine company owners. Kettle Bottom is about how a community lived in the presence of constant danger and the choices the residents made.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. The classic story about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century in the slums of Brooklyn. Like the tree that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, the resourceful protagonist struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. The daily experiences of the Nolan family are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness.

An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots, Lorraine M. Lopez, ed. A compelling anthology of personal essays and memoir by a diverse group of gifted authors united by their poor or working-class roots in America. The stories are, in a sense, travel narratives of women who have journeyed beyond their family circumstances to cross class borders, aided by educational opportunities that encouraged their literary gifts to blossom. Mary Childers’ contribution is entitled “Sex and the Inner City.”

Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College, Richard D. Kahlenberg, ed. Higher education is a major force in promoting social mobility, yet colleges and universities seem more concerned with prestige than finding ways to make higher learning more accessible. This book outlines two high-profile models that colleges and universities can follow in making the American Dream a realistic one for all students.

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Second Edition with an Update a Decade Later by Annette Lareau, 2011. Social class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children, and this carefully researched book explores this fact. The book powerfully portrays class inequalities in the United States and analyzes the processes through which inequality is reproduced. The insights about the social stratification of family life and childrearing have deep implications for understanding inequality and for understanding the challenges of raising children in America.

When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson, 1997. One of the foremost authorities on race and poverty looks squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on urban poor, and argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy.

And: Any work by Janet Zandy, professor of language and literature at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has published widely on women's issues. Her books include:

Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings. A powerful and uncompromising collection of essays, stories, poems, oral histories, and more, reflecting the history and personal experiences of working-class women in America.

Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work. The author examines the literal loss of lives to unsafe jobs and occupational hazards, and asks critical questions about worker representation. She presents the voices of working-class writers and artists, and discusses their contribution to knowledge and culture.

Mary Childers also recommends:

Akeelah and the Bee, a 2006 American film written and directed by Doug Atchison that explores issues of education in a low socioeconomic African American community. It tells the story of Akeelah Anderson, an 11-year-old girl who participates in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and her mother, schoolmates, and coach. A great movie for kids.

Additional suggestions for staff and higher-level readers:

Growing Up Poor: A Literary Anthology, edited by Robert Coles and Randy Testa with Michael Coles. In a land of seemingly endless plenty, the book offers a startling and beautiful collection of stories, poems, and essays about growing up without. Selections range from growing up in the slums of New York in the early 1900s, to a family’s struggle during the Depression, to contemporary stories of rural and urban poverty by some foremost authors, including Langston Hughes, Sandra Cisneros, Ralph Ellison, Sherman Alexie, Gary Soto, Mildred Taylor, and Zora Neal Hurston.

Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. In 1998, inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job — any job — can be the ticket to a better life, the author decided to do personal research on how women pushed into the labor market could survive. She left her employment as a journalist and found jobs as an low-skilled worker, learning survival strategies of the poor and working class, and discovering that no job is “unskilled,” that one job is not enough, and that hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty.

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel. The author relates the voices of American men and women from every walk of life as they tell him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and joys on the job.

Additional literature to empower young women:

The Amelia Bloomer project creates an annual booklist of the best feminist books for young readers, as part of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association.  ameliabloomer. 

Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World by Kathleen Ragan. Gathered from around the world, these 100 multicultural folktales celebrate strong female heroines who save lives and bring peace to their communities not through brute strength — although endurance is a frequent feat — but through creativity, intelligence, eloquence, wisdom, kindness, perseverance, and loyalty. One reviewer comments, “It is really refreshing to find out that women's empowerment is not something new!” Adult level.

Strong women ~ biographical collections:

Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World by Cynthia Chin-Lee and others. The book introduces twenty-six diverse, 20th-century women who have made a difference in such varied fields as the arts, sports, journalism, science, and entertainment. Determination, imagination, perseverance, and strength bind them together. A short introduction, a quote, and art illustrate the essence of each person. Readers are introduced to the scope of the struggles and achievements of women from many times and many places. Elementary level.

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone. When NASA was launched in 1958, thirteen women proved they had as much of the right stuff as men to be astronauts, but their way to space was blocked by prejudice, insecurity, and a scrawled note written by one of Washington's most powerful men. This is the true story of the Mercury 13 women. Photos.

Dare to Dream! 25 Extraordinary Lives by Sandra McLeod. A collection of biographical sketches of famous 20th-century individuals, male and female who all have one thing in common: they became successful in the face of adversity and therefore are great role models for youth. Each individual’s life and education are discussed, as well as how that person's success may be attributed to hard work and courage. This book is good for reluctant readers as each biography can be read independently. The appeal is in the amazing facts and the diversity of individuals across history, race, class, and profession. Middle level.

50 Women Artists You Should Know by Christine Weidemann and others. This book offers more than five hundred years of achievements in art by women. This survey of fifty influential women artists from the Renaissance to the Post-Modern era details their vast contributions to the art world. For each artist there is a timeline highlighting significant events in her life; a short biography and information about her accomplishments and influence; additional resources to further study the artist; and full-color reproductions of the artist’s works.

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women by Catherine Thimmesh and Melissa Sweet. A collective biography of women and girls who changed the world with their inventions. Included are Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented Liquid Paper ("white-out"), and Ann Moore, who emulated the way African mothers carried their babies to create the Snugli. The book encourages young women to start inventing themselves and offers a list of organizations to help them get started. Colorful artwork shows the women and their creations and adds vibrancy to the text. Middle level.

Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Kruss and Kathryn Hewitt. This collection of biographies covers many well-known individuals as well as some more unknown. Readers are enticed by a bit of “gossip” in places. The stories are arranged chronologically, beginning with Cleopatra and concluding with Guatemalan leader Rigoberta Menchu. "Ever After" sections reveal aftereffects of each person's contribution to history. Middle level.

100 Women Who Shaped World History by Gail Meyer Rolka. Arranged chronologically, this selection of 100 profiles reveals how much women have done to shape history. Beginning with Queen Makare Hatshepsut (c. 1503-1468 B.C.) and concluding with Rigoberta Menchu, still actively involved in human rights issues, the concise profiles span history and place each woman's accomplishments within the context of the society in which she lived. Includes a list of related projects. YA.

Strong women ~ picture books:

Brave Margaret: An Irish Adventure by Robert D. San Souci. A retelling of an Irish folktale in which a young woman sails the high seas and confronts dangers, including an elderly sorceress and an evil giant. Along the way she discovers her true strength.

Changing Woman and Her Sisters: Stories of Goddesses from Around the World by Katrin Hyman Tchana. A celebration of feminine power, beauty, and complexity that tells the stories of ten goddesses from cultures the world over.

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses by Paul Goble. Story of a young Native American girl and her relationship with the horses in her care.

The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie DePaola. When a killing drought threatens the existence of the tribe, a courageous little Comanche girl sacrifices her most beloved possession to try to bring back the rain.

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. American Book Award-winning story of a woman who longs to travel the world, live in a house by the sea, and do something to make the world more beautiful.

Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter. This story follows Wangari, a girl—and then a woman—on a quest to bring back the trees around her home. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan, won a Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.

Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree by William Miller. Dreaming of living in the cities that she sees from the top of the chinaberry tree, young Zora learns about reaching for her dreams and listens to the stories of her fellow townspeople, from whom she obtains the secret of keeping the past alive.

Updated October 2014

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