Lexington Books
Pages: 378
•
Trim: 6¾ x 9½
978-0-7391-6531-7 • Hardback • August 2011 • $147.00 • (£113.00)
978-0-7391-6532-4 • Paperback • June 2013 • $58.99 • (£45.00)
978-0-7391-8713-5 • eBook • August 2011 • $56.00 • (£43.00)
Ruth E. Ray is professor of English/liberal arts at Wayne State University. Toni Calasanti is professor of sociology at Virginia Tech.
Chapter 1: Studying the 'Burden' of Age: The Work of the Hannan Archival Research Group
Part 2 Part I: The Burden of Age in the Great Depression
Chapter 3 Chapter 2: Public Response to the Needs of Old People
Chapter 4 Chapter 3: Private Response to the Needs of Old People
Part 5 Part II: This Old Man and That Old Woman
Chapter 6 Client Sketches
Part 7 Part III: Old Age in Hard Times
Chapter 8 Chapter 4: The Multiple Roles of Social Workers in the Great Depression
Chapter 9 Chapter 5: Resisting Dependence and Burden: On Refusing to Become a 'Little Old Lady'
Chapter 10 Chapter 6: Privileged but Pensioned? How Two Formerly Well-Off Women Experienced Receiving Aid
Chapter 11 Chapter 7: What is Held Dear: Personhood and Material Culture in Old Age
Chapter 12 Chapter 8: Race, Class, Gender and the Social Construction of 'Burden' in Old Age
Chapter 13 Chapter 9: The Haunting Fear: Narrative Burdens in the Great Depression
Part 14 Part IV: Rethinking the 'Burden' of Age
Chapter 15 Chapter 10: Reflections on Ageism: Perspective of a Septuagenarianon the Avoidance of Burdenhood
Chapter 16 Chapter 11: The Continuing Struggle for Old-Age Security
Chapter 17 Chapter 12: Toward a Future When We Truly Care for Old People
Chapter 18 Afterword: From Charity to Care
Old people who are also poor are more or less forbidden to actualize any form of personal identity and are nonetheless punished for it, facing both casual and systematic discrimination. During the Great Depression, as today, many were arbitrarily denied adequate means of survival, even if family members or social workers came to their aid. Editors Ray (English, Wayne State Univ.) and Calasanti (sociology, Virginia Tech) have drawn on the archives of the Luella Hannan Memorial Home in Detroit, Michigan, to produce this narrowly focused but often-moving history. The contributors show how, between 1927 and 1933, the city's poor elderly banded together in support groups and endured years of humiliation and social stigma and how advocates spread awareness of their plight until it became one of the central political issues of the New Deal. The book traces dozens of intersecting story lines--many of them in first-person narratives, case notes, and letters--that together show how ageism in the US fails vulnerable people who seek only to eschew their own vulnerability. The parallels between their era and the contemporary world are uncanny and quite frightening. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.
— Choice Reviews
As a gero-historian and grandchild of the Great Depression, who has experienced reversals of fortunes (economic and otherwise), I read Nobody's Burden with great admiration. Ruth Ray, Toni Calasanti, and their collaborators have mined archives to give us vivid history from the bottom up. They have recovered voices from the past which, richly informed by theory and narrative, should heighten our common resolve to fight sexism and ageism as we care for the needy.
— W. Andrew Achenbaum, University of Houston
Located in a particular time and a particular place, this unique interdisciplinary study reaches out across the years and across the globe to illuminate and inform our understanding of who might care for, and about, old people in the twenty-first century. Couched firmly within a tradition of feminist gerontology, it is a riveting and evocative exploration of what it was like to live into old age during the Great Depression. Marrying detailed archival research with perspectives drawn from anthropology, English studies, communication, sociology, political science and social work, the editors and contributors paint a vivid picture which resonates all too often with current preoccupations: at times disconcertingly, at others poignantly. This 'living story' will speak to everyone concerned with the ethics of elder care, social justice and the need for policy reform.
— Miriam Bernard, Keele University