Can't Catch a Break : Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility

Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can’t Catch a Brea k documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality. As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at (http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/) http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/ . List of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction 1. “Joey Spit on Me”: How Gender Inequality and Sexual Violence Make Women Sick 2. “Nowhere to Go”: Poverty, Homelessness, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility 3. “The Little Rock of the North”: Race, Gender, Class, and the Consequences of Mass Incarceration 4. Suffer the Women: Pain and Perfection in a Medicalized World 5. “It’s All in My Head”: Suffering, PTSD, and the Triumph of the Therapeutic 6. Higher Powers: The Unholy Alliance of Religion, Self-Help Ideology, and the State 7. “Suffer the Children”: Fostering the Caste of the Ill and Afflicted 8. Gender, Drugs, and Jail: “A System Designed for Us to Fail” Conclusion: The Real Questions and a Blueprint for Moving Forward Appendix: Methodology and Project Participant Overview Notes References Index Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can't Catch a Brea k documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality. As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/. "Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can't Catch a Break documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality"--Page 4 de la couverture "Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can't Catch a Break documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality."--Provided by publisher