Without a Net Quotes

“The better I understood my education, the angrier I became that most working-class and poor people are denied one. Why are the children of doctors, lawyers, and engineers taught the mysteries of existence while the children of janitors and waitresses are taught fear? I developed a preoccupation with my own inadequacies, aided by a few professors of elitism. To combat my growing anxiety, I began to envision myself a class spy. I would soak up all of the information they could give me and run reconnaissance for my team.”
― Frances Varian, Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class

“There exist the wealth and the working class. At Vassar I learned the two are not mutually exclusive. No matter how rich I might become, I will always be the daughter of a janitor. I will always look the woman who empties my garbage in the face. I will always say thank you to the man who serves me lunch. I am one of them, and I do not want to Get Out unless they can come too.”
― Frances Varian, Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class

“Poverty is not a natural conclusion. It is an intervention. We are not poor because we are inferior as a group of people; we are poor because it is imperative to the global economy that a limitless supply of labor exist. The labor must be cheap and disposable.”
― Frances Varian, Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class

“I am overwhelmed by the rigmarole of bureaucratic paperwork. I can't keep it all straight — the unemployment forms, the food-stamp applications, the drastically increasing number of ID cards that I am being forced to carry around with me. Being poor is a full-time job. Every minute, the government demands that you prove your current economic status, leaving absolutely no time to improve it. I have to schedule job interviews between all my other red-tape appointments.”
― Cassie Peterson, Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class

“Is this what growing up "without" means — that I can (almost) afford a fancy coat, but can't enjoy it? What about the American Dream, the theory that with hard work and perseverance people can transcend the class into which they are born? I want to believe in it, but I don't. Class is about more than money; it's about safety and security, knowing that what you have today, you will have tomorrow. It's about having faith and feeling safe in the knowledge that when my coat gets worn out, there will be other coats.”
― Terri Griffith, Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class

“Growing up in the projects, it was common for us to refer to where we lived as our "house." My friends would always ask if they could come over to my house, and vice versa; we never said , "Can I come over to your unit?" But after visiting Mary in a real house, I felt how marginal we were in the projects. Things they took for granted, like space, were new to me. Mary's windows opened up to the view of the garden in the back, birds, and blue sky, without bars.”
― Siobhan Brooks, Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class