Drawing upon four year's experience as a volunteer in a shelter, the author offers a portrait of homeless women. Taking us inside shelters, out on the streets, and deep into the lives and experiences of homeless women, this book uses a wide-ranging scholarship to integrate a number of perspectives - historical, sociological, psychological, literary and mythic - in an investigation of women whom society fears, ignores and rejects. In their own words, we hear about the experiences of a variety of women: Norma, committed to a mental hospital by her husband, keenly intelligent, but fluctuating between violent ups and downs that prevent her from keeping a job; Deborah, who grew up in a close-knit Jewish neighbourhood and was discovered 40 years later by an old playmate as a bag lady on the street; Ellen, who lived for three years in a box on Ninth Avenue and lost several fingers to frostbite before she was coaxed inside by a group of nuns. In discussing these women and the nameless others populating our streets, Golden gleans larger insights into the meaning of female marginality.
In a cultural analysis that moves from the 17th century to the present, Golden explores the truth about the mythology surrounding the "deviant" women who have lived apart from family or home - hoboes, tramps, witches and prostitutes - women whose forbidden female power and sexuality made them appear uncanny and threatening. The author casts the contemporary homeless women as the modern witch, who, like all marginal figures, serves a definite function for society simply by not being in it. In a reinterpretation of a Grimm fairy tale, the author forces the reader to reconsider how familiar images in literature and art reflect society's deep fear and suspicion of women who do not conform to cultural prescriptions of feminity. Asserting that these fears have shaped policy decisions about homeless women, the author debunks current stereotypes about the so-called mental illness of homeless women and calls for new public policies recognizing that homelessness is by and large a result not of individual pathology, but simply of a lack of affordable housing.
- ISBN10 0520071581
- ISBN13 9780520071582
- Publish Date 25 March 1992
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 November 2006
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of California Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 329
- Language English