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Summary
Summary
An intimate and frank look at poverty, abuse, and welfare dependence by a "welfare brat" who came of age in the blighted Bronx of the 1960s.
Mary Childers grew up in a neighborhood ravaged by poverty. Once a borough of elegant apartment buildings, parks, and universities, the Bronx had become a national symbol of urban decay. White flight, arson, rampant crime, and race riots provide the backdrop for Mary's story. The child of an absent carny father for whom she longed and a single welfare mother who schemed and struggled to house and feed her brood, Mary was the third of her mother's surviving seven children, who were fathered by four different men.
From an early age, Mary knew she was different. She loved her family fiercely but didn't want to repeat her mother's or older sisters' mistakes. The Childers family culture was infused with alcohol and drugs, and relations between the sexes were muddled by simultaneous feelings of rage and desire toward men. Fatherless children were the norm. Academic achievement and hard work were often scorned, not rewarded; five of the seven Childers children dropped out of high school. But Mary was determined to create a better life, and here she recounts her bumpy road to self-sufficiency. With this engaging and thoughtful examination of her difficult early years, Mary Childers breathes messy life into the issues of poverty and welfare dependence, childhood resilience, the American work ethic, and a popular culture that values sexuality more than self-esteem.
Author Notes
Mary Childers is a consultant who mediates conflict and provides discrimination prevention training for higher education and corporations. She has a Ph.D. in English literature and lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Growing up a poor white girl in the Bronx in the 1960s, Childers endured a childhood marred by violence, poverty, neglect and shame. In this poignant memoir, she recounts it all with astonishing honesty and grace. Focusing on her life between the ages of 10 and 16, Childers draws a vivid portrait of a family fighting for survival, triumphing over unwanted pregnancies and cruel boyfriends, and held together by an alcoholic but occasionally heroic single mother. The strength of this heartrending tale lies in its contradictions: Childers loves her family but also bitterly resents them, longing for the day that she can escape only to find that she misses them when she is gone. The depth and complexity of the individuals, particularly Childers?s alternately selfish and sympathetic mother, is a testament to her compassion as a writer and her ability to empathize with and forgive people?s flaws. Childers neither romanticizes nor bemoans her family?s struggle, but tells her story candidly in prose that sparkles with energy and wit, speaking wisely on everything from race relations to the Church?s stance on birth control. Although the ending feels somewhat rushed, the book is an insightful and powerful tale that emphasizes ?what a heroine you have to be to drag yourself out of bed day after day into minimum-wage jobs, aware that you?ll never get ahead and fearful that everything will collapse.? (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Review
Clear-eyed coming-of-age story traces the author's girlhood in the Bronx of the 1950s and '60s, and her iron determination to claw her way out of the system. Childers was born into a large Irish Catholic family: one mother, several absent fathers and numerous half sisters. The pope's position on birth control meant that Childers's mother, Sandy, would never abort a child, and her drinking, loneliness and poor impulse control kept the Childers clan ever increasing. The author reports on the many small moments that added up to her unhappy childhood. There were the nights of searching for her mother in the bar and the days she had to fight to attend school rather than baby-sit the younger children. And there was the growing instability of the world outside. Crammed into a small apartment in one of the few neighborhoods they could afford, the Childers girls (and later one boy) had a front-row seat for watching the crumbling of the Bronx. In her dry, clear voice, the author reports on the growing crime, the flight of white neighbors and the racial tensions that played out in school and on the streets. It's clear that this sense of distance came at a cost to Childers: The day she left for college, her mother told her she might as well never come back. These tangled family relations, the tensions of wondering how the latest financial crisis can be solved, Sandy's raffish but undeniable appeal, the author's slow but inevitable escape from her family's undertow, the difficulty of seeing her less determined siblings going under--it all makes for raw, magnetic reading. The close, however, a brief commentary on social class, is a jarring and unnecessary addendum to an eloquent work. Childers's very specific portrait of a time and place makes for a valuable piece of social history, as well as a potent personal tale. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Childers describes her journey from a childhood growing up on welfare in the Bronx, one of seven children with four different fathers, to her life as a consultant with a Ph.D. in English literature. Her family had no phone and occasionally no electricity, and little food; and their mother often disappeared, leaving Mary in charge of her younger siblings. Something in Mary and her sister, Joan, makes them realize that they must break the cycle of poverty, and that the key is education. Mary is placed in accelerated programs, completing junior high in one year, and entering high school in 1966 in the tenth grade. Along the way she babysits to earn her own money, joins a gang until she perceives their hatred of minorities, experiences racial hatred herself after Martin Luther King's assassination, and eventually gets a full scholarship to a small college in western New York. Remarkably free of bitterness as she matures, Childers begins to focus on how hard her mother tried, instead of how often she failed. --Deborah Donovan Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Childers shares her heartfelt story of growing up white, Irish Catholic, and on welfare in the Bronx, NY, in the 1960s-70s, when the borough was a national symbol of urban decay. Now a consultant in conflict mediation and a trainer for higher education and corporations in the prevention of discrimination, Childers was the child of an absent carny father and an alcoholic single mother who schemed and struggled to house and feed her brood of seven children. In a direct yet dramatic and erudite style, she takes readers through her youth and adolescence, ending with her successful entry into the world of higher education and financial independence. Readers learn about the realities of living on public assistance, including the endless worry about never having enough money; regularly running out of food; having to depend on handouts and third-hand clothes; and endlessly searching for better public housing. Childers's story will appeal to fans of Lauralee Summer's Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars and Jeff Goodell's Sunnyvale. Highly recommended for larger public libraries.-Dale Farris, Groves, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.