Coming Of Age In The Other America
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Coming of Age in the Other America
Author: Stefanie DeLuca
language: en
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Release Date: 2016-04-19
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.
Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920
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.
Coming of Age
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