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A review by crystalstarrlight
Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless with Kids in America by Michelle Kennedy
4.0
This book has quite a personal story for me, so please, children, settle around and listen to Granny Crystal spin a yarn.
I was a sequestered homeschooled Evangelical Christian child. I entered the world of adulthood in 2002, totally and utterly clueless - and beyond the typical for any teenager-to-adult transition, I would argue. I really hadn't seen any of the world or met really any people outside my small, Evangelical Christian church bubble.
In the summer of 2003, I got my very first job (yes, at the age of 19, this was my first real job) working at a community college bookstore. I had tried applying to jobs in the past, but I was never accepted, so getting this job was a big deal for me. I am forever grateful to my boss from this job, a woman who took a chance on a girl who had no real prior work experience and got to see me go from a right-wing conservative Republican who would argue both against gay rights and cohabitating to the person I am today. That job meant so much to baby me - it gave me a chance to make my own money, to get out of the house and to meet other people. It was through that job I got to meet my first trans person, and fortunately, I didn't say or do anything (I hope!) that made her feel uncomfortable.
Initially, I thought I read this book in the summer of 2004, but this book was published in 2005 so that means I was likely reading this right up until I got my internship. In those moments when the store was dead, there was nothing to stock or clean or no customers to help (generally the couple of weeks before class and the first two weeks of classes were the busiest times), I was inclined to read the books hidden on the shelves. The first summer of my job in 2003, there was a lit of scifi class going on, and I snuck a read of "We", one of 6 books from that 6-week class and one that my now-oldest friend (we met in a calculus class the winter of 2003) was reading in the class and gushed about. I never ended up finishing that one, though by Jove, I tried. I'm not sure what it was about this book that drew my eye, but I did read it and pretty much gobbled it up. BUT, as luck would have it, I never got a chance to finish this book either, even though I was a hair's breadth from the end. While I have read many many books over the years, books where the only way I remember reading it is from the review I wrote at the time, this story of this woman has stuck with me for years in almost vivid detail. I ended up buying the book at one point in the last 16 years (OMG I AM OLD), but I hadn't gotten around to reading the book I started all those years ago in that college bookstore.
This has been a strange year; I don't get the chance to swap graphic novels with my coworker, and my desire to read has plummeted. I have started and stopped more books than I can count. And yet, I found this book and decided today was the day.
This book is how a young woman made a bunch of decisions that ultimately led her and her 3 under 5 kids to live in a car during a summer. She was too rich for food stamps and too poor for an apartment. She worked her rear off to take care of her family and finally, enough good will came her way for her to scrape out of the bad circumstances.
I gotta hand it to this woman for her "gumption" - I think we can all agree, though, she was still privileged in many, many ways. Kennedy had parents who could send her money (even if they had their own struggles and she refused to tell them how bad things truly were). She didn't live in a city or during the winter months or in a location with extreme heat. She was white, cis-gendered.
But her comments "You have to be rich to be poor" are true. She couldn't afford first and last month's rent (plus deposit) so it's a motel or a campsite...or a car. She didn't have a fridge, so no gallon jugs of milk or eggs or fruit. She was lucky to use her boss's house address and the pub's phone or it would have been potentially worse. And ultimately, she met people, a village, to help her raise her kids - Barb and Lex, who would look out for the kids sleeping in the car, then Diane, who would babysit the 3 kids for a ridiculously low wage, then the land lady, who not only rented out her space to Kennedy and her kids but also offered the two oldest kids odd jobs raking and helping baking.
Kennedy comments that she didn't realize about other resources - a local church, food pantries, assistance for child care and housing - because who really thinks they'll become homeless?
Besides the social commentary, that our society doesn't have near enough available resources to help people get back on their feet, there is a smidgeon of personal responsibility in this as well. This is not me blaming Kennedy for what happened, but I will remark that many of the decisions Kennedy makes were reactionary - being in a relationship with Tom in the first place, marrying Tom to get financial aid, then dropping out of school to take care of the baby, having 3 children in rapid succession, living beyond your means, and then going with her husband (who never really seemed to love her or their kids) to Maine in the first place. I want to be clear: I am not saying that Kennedy was asking for any of this; as teenagers we make stupid decisions all the time and don't really think things ahead. I think a good takeaway from this is to really think about the future before making massive decisions like getting married, having children, going to college, moving or quitting your job.
It is nice to finally know how this book ends. Michelle Kennedy Hogan still writes; you can find an interesting essay she wrote 3 years ago, a poem, a half excerpt of a story from this book as well as read a bit more about the background of this in this interesting interview I dug up (as well as some clarification on the actual locations this book took place) as well as this one. She's written more, especially on Medium, but most of those articles have been deleted.
In Kennedy-Hogan's Wikipedia, it says she had 8 children (OMG!) and continued to write 15 more books. From what I can see, she's lived in Hawaii, where she dried her own cacao beans and also ended up living in a bus, pursuing the minimalist lifestyle. I wish her and her family well and I hope her story helps motivate all of us to continue to push for resources to help the homeless.
I was a sequestered homeschooled Evangelical Christian child. I entered the world of adulthood in 2002, totally and utterly clueless - and beyond the typical for any teenager-to-adult transition, I would argue. I really hadn't seen any of the world or met really any people outside my small, Evangelical Christian church bubble.
In the summer of 2003, I got my very first job (yes, at the age of 19, this was my first real job) working at a community college bookstore. I had tried applying to jobs in the past, but I was never accepted, so getting this job was a big deal for me. I am forever grateful to my boss from this job, a woman who took a chance on a girl who had no real prior work experience and got to see me go from a right-wing conservative Republican who would argue both against gay rights and cohabitating to the person I am today. That job meant so much to baby me - it gave me a chance to make my own money, to get out of the house and to meet other people. It was through that job I got to meet my first trans person, and fortunately, I didn't say or do anything (I hope!) that made her feel uncomfortable.
Initially, I thought I read this book in the summer of 2004, but this book was published in 2005 so that means I was likely reading this right up until I got my internship. In those moments when the store was dead, there was nothing to stock or clean or no customers to help (generally the couple of weeks before class and the first two weeks of classes were the busiest times), I was inclined to read the books hidden on the shelves. The first summer of my job in 2003, there was a lit of scifi class going on, and I snuck a read of "We", one of 6 books from that 6-week class and one that my now-oldest friend (we met in a calculus class the winter of 2003) was reading in the class and gushed about. I never ended up finishing that one, though by Jove, I tried. I'm not sure what it was about this book that drew my eye, but I did read it and pretty much gobbled it up. BUT, as luck would have it, I never got a chance to finish this book either, even though I was a hair's breadth from the end. While I have read many many books over the years, books where the only way I remember reading it is from the review I wrote at the time, this story of this woman has stuck with me for years in almost vivid detail. I ended up buying the book at one point in the last 16 years (OMG I AM OLD), but I hadn't gotten around to reading the book I started all those years ago in that college bookstore.
This has been a strange year; I don't get the chance to swap graphic novels with my coworker, and my desire to read has plummeted. I have started and stopped more books than I can count. And yet, I found this book and decided today was the day.
This book is how a young woman made a bunch of decisions that ultimately led her and her 3 under 5 kids to live in a car during a summer. She was too rich for food stamps and too poor for an apartment. She worked her rear off to take care of her family and finally, enough good will came her way for her to scrape out of the bad circumstances.
I gotta hand it to this woman for her "gumption" - I think we can all agree, though, she was still privileged in many, many ways. Kennedy had parents who could send her money (even if they had their own struggles and she refused to tell them how bad things truly were). She didn't live in a city or during the winter months or in a location with extreme heat. She was white, cis-gendered.
But her comments "You have to be rich to be poor" are true. She couldn't afford first and last month's rent (plus deposit) so it's a motel or a campsite...or a car. She didn't have a fridge, so no gallon jugs of milk or eggs or fruit. She was lucky to use her boss's house address and the pub's phone or it would have been potentially worse. And ultimately, she met people, a village, to help her raise her kids - Barb and Lex, who would look out for the kids sleeping in the car, then Diane, who would babysit the 3 kids for a ridiculously low wage, then the land lady, who not only rented out her space to Kennedy and her kids but also offered the two oldest kids odd jobs raking and helping baking.
Kennedy comments that she didn't realize about other resources - a local church, food pantries, assistance for child care and housing - because who really thinks they'll become homeless?
Besides the social commentary, that our society doesn't have near enough available resources to help people get back on their feet, there is a smidgeon of personal responsibility in this as well. This is not me blaming Kennedy for what happened, but I will remark that many of the decisions Kennedy makes were reactionary - being in a relationship with Tom in the first place, marrying Tom to get financial aid, then dropping out of school to take care of the baby, having 3 children in rapid succession, living beyond your means, and then going with her husband (who never really seemed to love her or their kids) to Maine in the first place. I want to be clear: I am not saying that Kennedy was asking for any of this; as teenagers we make stupid decisions all the time and don't really think things ahead. I think a good takeaway from this is to really think about the future before making massive decisions like getting married, having children, going to college, moving or quitting your job.
It is nice to finally know how this book ends. Michelle Kennedy Hogan still writes; you can find an interesting essay she wrote 3 years ago, a poem, a half excerpt of a story from this book as well as read a bit more about the background of this in this interesting interview I dug up (as well as some clarification on the actual locations this book took place) as well as this one. She's written more, especially on Medium, but most of those articles have been deleted.
In Kennedy-Hogan's Wikipedia, it says she had 8 children (OMG!) and continued to write 15 more books. From what I can see, she's lived in Hawaii, where she dried her own cacao beans and also ended up living in a bus, pursuing the minimalist lifestyle. I wish her and her family well and I hope her story helps motivate all of us to continue to push for resources to help the homeless.