DONT CALL US OUT OF NAME CL [Hardcover]

Lisa Dodson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 1998

For over eight years, Dodson has been documenting the lives of girls and women - hundreds of white, African-American, Latino, Haitian, Irish, and other women in personal interviews, focus groups, surveys, and Life-History Studies. This book is a crossing - a class crossing - taking readers into fellowship with people who are seldom invited to speak but who have powerful stories to tell and who force us to abandon common myths that have been fed to us by the media about school dropouts, teen pregnancy, and welfare "cheats." Don't Call Us Out of Name delves deeply into the realities of their lives, often with surprising and uplifting stories of commonplace courage, unimaginable strength, and resourcefulness. Lisa Dodson does not simply give us the truth about women living in poverty but offers realistic hope for meaningful policy reform based on the experience and analysis of the women we have seen so far only in stereotype and whose voices we have not truly heard. These women emerge as critical contributors to the creation of sound, humane public policy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Don't Call Us Out of Name, a 15-year-old, rendered invisible to her teachers by poverty, shrewdly says, "They don't notice us till we get pregnant." Author Lisa Dodson draws on the pithy words of this girl and others in the Boston school system who participated in focus groups dedicated to prying loose their thoughts on such subjects as poverty, romance, sex, race, class, pregnancy, domestic violence, and raising children. Many are predictably lost; some are drifting toward the shoals of teenage motherhood; others are sexually abused "rag-doll girls" fueled by an overwhelming urge to placate others; and some are so angry they seem bound to immolate themselves and anyone else in their path. Their savvy is heartbreaking because it's laced with typical adolescent dreams that, for them, seem unattainable. Still, some among the girls and women who recount their lives here are resourcefully determined to shake off poverty and make everyone sit up and take notice. When one mother's 7-year-old comes home from school asking her how to spell "welfare recipient," she feels "humiliated, betrayed, and finally outraged," that all her work, care, struggles, and love could be reduced to that one derogatory phrase. A normally meek person, she begins to speak out everywhere about "the importance of family duty and of respecting women and raising children properly." This leads to a job at a local school and later a community center. Dodson's gift is to make us clearly see the world these women and girls inhabit and pray for their survival. --Francesca Coltrera

From Publishers Weekly

During school, Dodson worked in a candy and an electronics factory; later, she served as an ob/gyn nurse in a poor and violent neighborhood. Now that she's a fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute, she has melded those experiences into an account that addresses frequent stereotypes of women on welfare. Dodson used focus groups, interviews and surveys, offering money in exchange for cooperation. Many bravely managed to pull themselves up, seeking education or work to raise their standard of living, but with many, familial history repeated itself with disheartening inevitability. The subordinate position of women is nowhere clearer than in these women's lives. Children are their only allies, and the only thing they can control, so they continue to give birth to future generations who face the same conditions. What cuts across all lines of culture and class is a sense of frustration, of people trying to survive physically and psychologically in a structured institution. Dodson's work is riveting, a true wake-up call for those who view the problem as laziness and corruption among the poor, rather than a system that has failed. A well-written and eye-opening salvo in one of America's most crucial debates.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; 1St Edition edition (October 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807042080
• ISBN-13: 978-0807042083
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,338,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lisa Dodson worked as a union activist, an obstetrical nurse, and the director of the Division of Women's Health for the state of Massachusetts before becoming a professor of sociology at Boston College. Author of The Moral Underground and Don't Call Us Out of Name, she lives in Auburndale, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a gripping novel but a must-read for policy makers., June 2, 1999

By 

Leah McClellan ([e-mail]) (Cherry Hill, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: DONT CALL US OUT OF NAME CL (Hardcover)

Those of us comfortable in our suburban sprawl, our urban chic, our corporate climbs, and our hard work and diligence think that getting off welfare is as simple as getting a job--any job. Those of us born and bred on one side or the other of middle-class America look suspiciously at "welfare mothers" and believe that they have more babies for bigger checks. That they are lazy, dysfunctional drug addicts. That they lounge in the lap of luxury, compliments of our hard earned tax dollars. The middle-class, hard work ethic says that anyone can do as we do--work and prosper--and anyone who doesn't is a low-life.

Lisa Dodson, in Don't Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America, shows us an entirely different picture.

Over eight years of interviews, surveys, observations, and focus groups with women of many racial and ethnic backgrounds in the Boston area culminates in this frequently heart-wrenching account of what it's really like on the other side. On page after page and in their own words, Dodson allows hundreds of "savvy, complex, and challenging" women to come forth and tell their stories for themselves.

Contrary to the notion that poverty reflects character defects, Dodson stresses that these women uphold a tradition of family values and perform meaningful family care work that is neither paid nor recognized. They have grown up "deprived of basic material support in the midst of great national wealth," and that deprivation dictates not only a chaotic lifestyle, but it also generates a host of inherent challenges and difficulties. These women have not chosen a subsistence-level life of monthly welfare checks and food stamps because they like it; far too often, few choices are available and rising up is next to impossible.

So many of us--individuals, social workers, policy-makers--accuse poor women of irresponsible motherhood. We deplore the many unwed, teen-aged mothers that seem to come overwhelmingly from the ranks of poor America and who, too often, end up on welfare like their mothers before them. Why don't they wait for motherhood? But these young women say "Wait for what? What is coming anyway?" Dodson maintains that motherhood is the next logical step for these young women "who have no access to college, career ladders, and other entries into the dominant society."

Dodson explains that a key element and the primary fuel for the ongoing cycle of poverty among women is what she calls "daughters' work." While their middle-class peers develop skills and identities through school achievements, extra-curricular activities, team sports, and hobbies, many poor girls spend their developmental years "providing child care, performing house chores, and trying to help with troubles and instabilities faced by their parents." Among the women and girls she studied, Dodson reports that "the time girls provided for housework and child care ranged between sixteen and twenty hours each week." Instead of preparing for a career, developing an identity, and envisioning a dream, these girls "do very much the same work in their families as their mother's generation did before them." Their lives are filled not with schoolwork, friends, and socialization for middle class roles but with training for motherhood. Why, then, should they not do what they have been taught?

Clearly empathetic yet factual, Dodson lets these women tell their stories of stark reality as they struggle to raise families in conditions that are unthinkable to many of us. These women need more than an ultimatum of "get to work." They already are working and have been for years; now they need directions on a new road that is littered with "little erosions which finally wear you down into someone you don't want to be." As they turn their lives around, they need help with their situations of "chronic exhaustion . . . no car, no warm coats, no baby clothes, no functioning laundry in the building, no elevator and many stairs, no heat sometimes, no Pampers, no tampons, of long lines at clinics, and of being able to go only to stores that accept food stamps, and, above all, of having no one to 'offer a kind word.'"

Dodson concludes that the success of welfare reform will rely on "the degree to which these millions of girls in poor America can imagine another life." And that success will depend upon "a changed practice in the building of American public policy," one that acknowledges that "the people who will live with the policy consequences must be at the table."

Don't Call Us Out of Name reads much like a gripping novel, yet it belongs on every policy-maker's shelf. While it is a well-documented, carefully researched study, Dodson avoids highly technical or overinflated language, and it is therefore accessible to most readers. Most effective are the many exact quotes from the women who are the characters in this real life drama that is currently in the spotlight of public debate: their passion, their spirit, and their indomitable courage echo on every page of this most timely and necessary book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars McLain, Review, December 6, 2009

By 

Sherry Mclain "McLain review" (De Soto, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Don't Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America (Paperback)

In this book Dodson conveys the experiences and challenges of women with families

living, coping and breaking away from living poor in America. Dodson presents this

evolution in a matter of fact manner that shares in the joys and sorrows that are faced

by these women and the way they feel treated by society. The title of this book, "Don't

Call Me Out of Name", on the streets means don't call me something I'm not.

Dodson uses over eight years of interviews, surveys, observations and focus groups with

women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, that live in Boston, on what it is like

to live in poverty. This is an eye opening account of these women's struggles to have a life,

to strive for a better life and the challenges of getting there. Dodson also gets input from

these women on what their needs are, what helps and what hampers getting out of poverty

and successfully off welfare. This book is written for a general reading audience but

should belong on the shelves of policy-makers and all people involved in welfare reform.

Many sections of Dodson's book point to education as the way out of this lifestyle, but

how difficult it is to obtain an education with all the strife's of living in poverty, i.e., no

transportation, no reliable childcare, no support. As a former welfare recipient I

understand the complexities of "working" the system to obtain a better life and how time

consuming the welfare system is. I found this book very informative and enlightening and

learned about people living in poverty trying to better their lives. I rate this book a 4 (very

good) because the beginning of the book was slow to maneuver through. The question that

I would have for the author would be does she have any ideas on how to improve the

welfare system because she has spent so much time listening to the needs of the welfare

recipients.

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Call Us Out of Name, February 6, 2010

By 

Tom Currao - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Don't Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America (Paperback)

An excellent, eye-opening book. For me, the take-away messages were that everyone needs someone for emotional and spiritual support, and a college education can help you get out of a financial hole in life.