1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786652103321

Autore

Sered Susan Starr

Titolo

Can't catch a break : gender, jail, drugs and the limits of personal responsibility / / Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oakland, California : , : University of California Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-520-95870-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (231 p.)

Disciplina

362.83/70974461

Soggetti

Abused women - Massachusetts - Boston - Social conditions

Female offenders - Massachusetts - Boston - Social conditions

Women drug addicts - Massachusetts - Boston - Social conditions

Responsibility - Social aspects - Massachusetts - Boston

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- 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

Sommario/riassunto

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.