| Description |
366 pages ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-354) and index. |
| Contents |
Trash picking -- Quaker lace -- Check day -- An historic square mile -- Scratching matches -- Don't stand here -- Fried perch on white bread -- In the house of the Lord -- Riding with the devil -- A teenaged prostitute -- A necessary butt whipping -- Skinny Joey -- A home for the holidays -- Money Williams -- Survivors. |
| Summary |
In North Philadelphia, Odessa Williams, a great-grandmother, picks through trash to furnish her home and clothe her grandchildren. She also goes fishing to provide extra food and charges people for rides to and from the welfare office and supermarket to supplement her meager income. Cheri Honkala and others set up tent cities, take over an abandoned church, and occupy vacant HUD buildings to seek shelter and protest the lack of affordable housing. Against the backdrop of the welfare reform act, which revoked the federal guarantee of welfare to low-income families with dependent children, Zucchino, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with the Philadelphia Inquirer, documents the lives of these women and others over a six-month period. The result, a harrowing description of daily subsistence living with very little chance of change, is a powerful expose of the welfare myth. |
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In this extraordinary first book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, author David Zucchino sets out to sift through the stereotypes, politics, and pure misinformation about families on welfare. A reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Zucchino gives us an intimate look at Odessa Williams and Cheri Honkala, two "welfare mothers" from Philadelphia, a city with a disproportionately large number of welfare recipients. He spends the better part of a year with these women, watching as Odessa constructs livable surroundings for herself and her extended family by scavenging and trash picking. Though her character, spirit, and resolve are constantly tested by family crises, she remains the strong and inspiring center of her large - and largely dependent - family. |
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Zucchino also grows to admire Cheri, a single mother of one son, and a tireless advocate for the rights of the homeless. He watches as she helps one family after another pick up and keep on going. With utter dedication and zeal, and with remarkably little concern for material gains of her own, Cheri battles an inflexible city bureaucracy that in her view makes the already difficult lives of the city's poor nearly impossible. In this groundbreaking and beautifully written book, Zucchino balances his reporter's objectivity with profound compassion. In seeking to answer the question "What do welfare mothers do all day?" he uncovers no easy answers but is able to say definitively: "If there were any Cadillac-driving, champagne-sipping, penthouse-living, welfare queens in Philadelphia, I didn't find them." |
| Subject |
Welfare recipients -- United States -- Social conditions.
|
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Welfare recipients -- United States -- Economic conditions.
|
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Women -- United States -- Social conditions.
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Women -- United States -- Economic conditions.
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Welfare recipients -- Economic conditions.
(OCoLC)fst01173642
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Welfare recipients -- Social conditions.
(OCoLC)fst01173677
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Women -- Economic conditions.
(OCoLC)fst01176665
|
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Women -- Social conditions.
(OCoLC)fst01176947
|
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United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
|
| Added Title |
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist's portrait of women on the line |
| Other Form: |
Online version: Zucchino, David. Myth of the welfare queen. New York : Scribner, ©1997 (OCoLC)651917487 |
| ISBN |
0684819147 |
|
9780684819143 |
|
