Coming Of Age In The Other America

Download or read book Coming of Age in the Other America written by Stefanie DeLuca and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research on inequality and poverty has shown that those born into low-income families, especially African Americans, still have difficulty entering the middle class, in part because of the disadvantages they experience living in more dangerous neighborhoods, going to inferior public schools, and persistent racial inequality. Coming of Age in the Other America shows that despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from ten years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologists Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin highlight the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and show how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage. Coming of Age in the Other America illuminates the profound effects of neighborhoods on impoverished families. The authors conducted in-depth interviews and fieldwork with 150 young adults, and found that those who had been able to move to better neighborhoods—either as part of the Moving to Opportunity program or by other means—achieved much higher rates of high school completion and college enrollment than their parents. About half the youth surveyed reported being motivated by an “identity project”—or a strong passion such as music, art, or a dream job—to finish school and build a career. Yet the authors also found troubling evidence that some of the most promising young adults often fell short of their goals and remained mired in poverty. Factors such as neighborhood violence and family trauma put these youth on expedited paths to adulthood, forcing them to shorten or end their schooling and find jobs much earlier than their middle-class counterparts. Weak labor markets and subpar postsecondary educational institutions, including exploitative for-profit trade schools and under-funded community colleges, saddle some young adults with debt and trap them in low-wage jobs. A third of the youth surveyed—particularly those who had not developed identity projects—were neither employed nor in school. To address these barriers to success, the authors recommend initiatives that help transform poor neighborhoods and provide institutional support for the identity projects that motivate youth to stay in school. They propose increased regulation of for-profit schools and increased college resources for low-income high school students. Coming of Age in the Other America presents a sensitive, nuanced account of how a generation of ambitious but underprivileged young Baltimoreans has struggled to succeed. It both challenges long-held myths about inner-city youth and shows how the process of “social reproduction”—where children end up stuck in the same place as their parents—is far from inevitable.

Download or read book The Other America written by Michael Harrington and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-08 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the economic underworld of migrant farm workers, the aged, minority groups, and other economically underprivileged groups.

Download or read book Coming of Age in a Hardscrabble World written by Nancy C. Atwood and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nonfiction storytelling is at its best in this anthology of excerpts from memoirs by thirty authors—some eminent, some less well known—who grew up tough and talented in working-class America. Their stories, selected from literary memoirs published between 1982 and 2014, cover episodes from childhood to young adulthood within a spectrum of life-changing experiences. Although diverse ethnically, racially, geographically, and in sexual orientation, these writers share a youthful precocity and determination to find opportunity where little appeared to exist. All of these perspectives are explored within the larger context of economic insecurity—a needed perspective in this time of growing inequality. These memoirists grew up in families that led “hardscrabble” lives in which struggle and strenuous effort were the norm. Their stories offer insight on the realities of class in America, as well as inspiration and hope.

Download or read book Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 written by Melissa R. Klapper and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860—1920 draws on a wealth of archival material, much of which has never been published—or even read—to illuminate the ways in which Jewish girls’ adolescent experiences reflected larger issues relating to gender, ethnicity, religion, and education. Klapper explores the dual roles girls played as agents of acculturation and guardians of tradition. Their search for an identity as American girls that would not require the abandonment of Jewish tradition and culture mirrored the struggle of their families and communities for integration into American society. While focusing on their lives as girls, not the adults they would later become, Klapper draws on the papers of such figures as Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah; Edna Ferber, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Showboat; and Marie Syrkin, literary critic and Zionist. Klapper also analyzes the diaries, memoirs, and letters of hundreds of other girls whose later lives and experiences have been lost to history. Told in an engaging style and filled with colorful quotes, the book brings to life a neglected group of fascinating historical figures during a pivotal moment in the development of gender roles, adolescence, and the modern American Jewish community.

Download or read book Coming of Age written by G. Wayne Miller and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-05-09 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: G. Wayne Miller explores the drama and passion teenagers hide from everyone but their peers in this warm, funny, and eye-opening account of two kids from a small New England town as they come of age. As Dave Bettencourt, seventeen, begins his senior year of high school, there are many things he wants to do: be elected class clown; start on the varsity basketball team; turn his high school upside down with his radical underground newspaper, Total Godhead; finally convince his mother, a biology teacher, that he’ll never be a scientist; and take his strikingly beautiful girlfriend, Beth Sunn—whose passion is in-your-face rap—to the prom. Beth’s plans for her sophomore year include: loving Dave forever; being a cheerleader; surviving school; and staying absolutely cool. All over America, teens like Beth and Dave are coming of age in a world that is dramatically different from the one in which most of us grew up. But their experience is universal: They’re falling in love, defying their parents, learning to be independent, and discovering who they are. This is the true story of two kids growing up on Main Street, U.S.A., away from urban violence and the glare of the national media—a place where, despite all the pressures of a new age, it is still possible to believe the good things about being young. “Offers a sympathetic and insightful portrait of high school life in the heartland.”—Julie Salamon, author of Devil’s Candy

Download or read book King and the Other America written by Sylvie Laurent and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortly before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. called for a radical redistribution of economic and political power to transform the whole of society. In 1967, he envisioned and designed the Poor People’s Campaign, an interracial effort that was carried out after his death. This campaign brought together impoverished Americans of all races to demand better wages, better jobs, better homes, and better education. King and the Other America explores this overlooked and obscured episode of the late civil rights movement, deepening our understanding of King’s commitment to social justice and also of the long-term trajectory of the civil rights movement. Digging into earlier radical arguments about economic inequality across America, which King drew on throughout his entire political and religious life, Sylvie Laurent argues that the Poor People’s Campaign was the logical culmination of King’s influences and ideas, which have had lasting impact on young activists and the public. Fifty years later, growing inequality and grinding poverty in the United States have spurred new efforts to rejuvenate the campaign. This book draws the connections between King's perceptive thoughts on substantive justice and the ongoing quest for equality for all.

Download or read book Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America written by Phoebe Ho and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to become an adult in the face of economic uncertainty and increasing racial and immigrant diversity? Nearly half of all young people in the United States are racial minorities, and one in four are from immigrant families. Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America offers a comprehensive overview of young people across racial and immigrant groups and their paths through traditional markers of adulthood—from finishing education, working full time, and establishing residential independence to getting married and having children. Taking a look at the diversity of experiences, the authors uncover how the transition to adulthood is increasingly fragmented, especially among those without college degrees. This book will introduce students to immigrant, racial, and ethnic diversity in the transition to adulthood in contemporary America.