Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class (Live Girls)

My parents divorced when I was 7 years old. My mother had primary custody. She was the first in her family to get a college education, even though she had to go back to night-school to finish her degree due to my arrival on the scene. Dad had a master's degree in social work, never a big money-making field. So, during my early years, we were fairly poor and I spent a whole lot of time with many different babysitters while Mom labored in the white-collar world to move us up from working class to middle class. I don't have many memories of my poor years. When I was 6 or 7, I do remember pretending a porcelain cat bought at a yard sale with my grandmother was actually a Barbie doll, because we couldn't afford a real Barbie at the time. But I was young and didn't really figure out that money was at all tight until middle school. Then the typical image-conscious BS became part of my existence. I always worked to make extra for school clothes, so I could keep up appearances. I had to have the "right" Levis. The "right" WBLM t-shirt. The L.L. Bean tote bag purse. I couldn't look like one of those Salvation Army rejects. Thrift stores were not cool where I came from, possibly because the racks were filled with redneck cast-offs. Kids can be so stupid. This book gave me a couple of "Aha!" moments, particularly when the contributors wrote about fish-out-of-water feelings when functioning within different social castes. Though I grew up working and then middle class, I went to a very upper class college. There were definitely times when I felt like I was "passing," as some authors put it. My upbringing remained a part of me, but not as some deep-seated shame. I felt power from my roots. It was nice to read about other women who also felt working class pride, pride in their survival skills and values. I could also relate to the sense of loss of those who felt somewhere in between their class of origin and their current economic class. You can't really go home again, after a certain point. Yet, you never feel like you fully belong where you are either. You have to create a place for yourself. And that's what a lot of these women write about: finding their place.

I recommend this book without a doubt. I had to get it for one of my college classes and read it more than once. There are a number of short stories written by different women about their childhoods. This is a good read for anybody who cares about humanity. It's well written and very moving.

Edited by the working-class lesbian feminist author and activist, Michelle Tea, "Without a Net" powerfully documents the diverse lives of women living in poverty. While this inclusive multi-narrative text dramatically testifies to the strength of low-income women in the United States, it fails, however, to provide any real collective strategy for female resistance to capitalist exploitation. Nevertheless, I applaud this book for holding the mainstream feminist movement accountable for its classism and insisting, once-and-for-all, that economic justice is integral to women's liberation.

Gritty, interesting, and well written. The writers of the entries almost all reveal being lesbian. I think this makes the book not quite as representative as it would otherwise have been. However, it is very good and I recommend it.

This is an important collection of women writers who deserve to be heard. It is refreshing to hear from women who know what poverty and struggle are like from experience.

Excellent book ..! It’s actually my second copy

This was a very accessible book that touches on the concepts of gender, race, and class issues! I used it for teaching College Writing.

AMAZINGLY ALL OF THE LIST OF BOOKS PURCHASED WAS WORTH EVERY CENT....:D I'M SURE I'LL ACE MY CLASSES :D

Whenever I have a little money left I order this book and give it to the people in my surrounding that were raised working/poverty-class as an empowerment-tool! It's really, really great!