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Re: Poverty Punctuation
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From: Deborah Hopkinson <deborahhopkinson_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 07:36:50 -0700 (PDT)
When I talk to students in schools about my two nonfiction books that hav e a relation to poverty - Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of Ne w York and Up Before Daybrak, People and Cotton in America, I like to u se photographs as a way of trying to understand people's lives.
I love doing this with kids because they usually start out only seeing that a photo is black and white -- and therefore old. (And boring, not real, somehow apart from our experience.)
I like to ask them: What's going on here? What do you see that makes you say so? How are these people's lives like ours? How are they differe nt?
If we are looking at a historical photo of an immigrant family doing pi ece-work at home, I try to get them to not label, ie "these people are poor" or something like that but to see a fuller picture to the ex tent that we can, To look beyond labels -- we might notice little ch ildren having to work to help their mom, but also notice how the family h as hung pictures on the wall to decorate their tenement apartment, and that there is a pet cat under the table, etc.
I've recently have been helping my son with a college communications class where they are reading theorists, one was a piece (apparently famous but I was an English major so I am embarrassingly ignorant) by Herbert Gans cal led "Deconstructing the Underclass." If you're not familiar with it, h e explores a lot of the issues being discussed here - labeling, blaming p eople for being poor, lumping and stereotyping, racial discrimation, and use of this term as it relates to economic policies.
Deborah
Deborah Hopkinson www.deborahhopkinson.com
--- On Fri, 5/13/11, Angie Miles wrote:
From: Angie Miles Subject:
Poverty Punctuation To: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu Date: Friday, May 13, 2011, 5:29 AM
Sorry... just correcting a mis-type in my previous post... meant to say
Yes. There can be great wealth among those considered poor... just like there can be devastating poverty among those counted as wealthy. and adding quickly...
Non-fiction has absolutely been potent in expressing themes of poverty. As a child growing in up a cash-strapped, rural family, biographies were gl orious to me. I remember being inspired by Annie Oakley, in particular. Anyone who deals triumphantly with any challenge provides a road map fo r the rest of us. Biographies are like gold.
Biographies don't stand alone as powerful among non-fiction works. When Jacob Riis shocked the world with How The Other Half Lives, a new kind of a wakening was set in motion. We see this kind of bravery in print now any time anyone with a conscience strives to tell the stories of those who rema in voiceless but deserve to be seen and heard. So non-fiction, including journalistic endeavors, are quite valuable in helping to illuminate who we are as human beings... the haves, the have-nots, and the who-cares.
Angie Miles www.happyreading.org
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 07:36:50 -0700 (PDT)
When I talk to students in schools about my two nonfiction books that hav e a relation to poverty - Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of Ne w York and Up Before Daybrak, People and Cotton in America, I like to u se photographs as a way of trying to understand people's lives.
I love doing this with kids because they usually start out only seeing that a photo is black and white -- and therefore old. (And boring, not real, somehow apart from our experience.)
I like to ask them: What's going on here? What do you see that makes you say so? How are these people's lives like ours? How are they differe nt?
If we are looking at a historical photo of an immigrant family doing pi ece-work at home, I try to get them to not label, ie "these people are poor" or something like that but to see a fuller picture to the ex tent that we can, To look beyond labels -- we might notice little ch ildren having to work to help their mom, but also notice how the family h as hung pictures on the wall to decorate their tenement apartment, and that there is a pet cat under the table, etc.
I've recently have been helping my son with a college communications class where they are reading theorists, one was a piece (apparently famous but I was an English major so I am embarrassingly ignorant) by Herbert Gans cal led "Deconstructing the Underclass." If you're not familiar with it, h e explores a lot of the issues being discussed here - labeling, blaming p eople for being poor, lumping and stereotyping, racial discrimation, and use of this term as it relates to economic policies.
Deborah
Deborah Hopkinson www.deborahhopkinson.com
--- On Fri, 5/13/11, Angie Miles wrote:
From: Angie Miles Subject:
Poverty Punctuation To: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu Date: Friday, May 13, 2011, 5:29 AM
Sorry... just correcting a mis-type in my previous post... meant to say
Yes. There can be great wealth among those considered poor... just like there can be devastating poverty among those counted as wealthy. and adding quickly...
Non-fiction has absolutely been potent in expressing themes of poverty. As a child growing in up a cash-strapped, rural family, biographies were gl orious to me. I remember being inspired by Annie Oakley, in particular. Anyone who deals triumphantly with any challenge provides a road map fo r the rest of us. Biographies are like gold.
Biographies don't stand alone as powerful among non-fiction works. When Jacob Riis shocked the world with How The Other Half Lives, a new kind of a wakening was set in motion. We see this kind of bravery in print now any time anyone with a conscience strives to tell the stories of those who rema in voiceless but deserve to be seen and heard. So non-fiction, including journalistic endeavors, are quite valuable in helping to illuminate who we are as human beings... the haves, the have-nots, and the who-cares.
Angie Miles www.happyreading.org
---Received on Fri 13 May 2011 07:36:50 AM CDT
