Ocean State Libraries

"Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap is a riveting portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers--primarily women--who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and...

Bastard Out of Carolina, nominated for the 1992 National Book Award for fiction, introduced Dorothy Allison as one of the most passionate and gifted writers of her generation. Now, in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, she takes a probing look at her family's history to give us a lyrical, complex memoir that explores how the gossip of one generation can become legends for the next.
Illustrated with photographs from the author's...

In the robust economy of the 1990s, it is easy to forget the 37 million people, mostly women and children, living below the federal poverty level. [The author], a policy fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute, brings this issue to the forefront of the national debate. After all, she points out, poor women are raising a large part of the nation. [She] bases her research on years of observation and working relationships with poor women in community...

Includes "My brother Paul."