1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910794988003321

Autore

Salamon Sonya

Titolo

Singlewide : chasing the American dream in a rural trailer park / / Sonya Salamon and Katherine MacTavish

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca : , : Cornell University Press, , 2017

ISBN

1-5017-0968-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (pages cm)

Disciplina

333.33/8

Soggetti

Mobile home living - United States

Mobile home parks - United States

Rural poor - Housing - United States

Housing, Rural - United States

United States Rural conditions

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : galvanized ghettoes -- The mobile home industrial complex -- Making ends meet, family finances -- The Illinois park : closer to the middle class -- The North Carolina parks : near ties that bind of kin and church -- The New Mexico parks : a dream rooted in place -- Youth and trailer park life -- Reforming the mobile home industrial complex -- Conclusion : family dreams and trailer park realities.

Sommario/riassunto

In Singlewide, Sonya Salamon and Katherine MacTavish explore the role of the trailer park as a source of affordable housing. America's trailer parks, most in rural places, shelter an estimated 12 million people, and the authors show how these parks serve as a private solution to a pressing public need. Singlewide considers the circumstances of families with school-age children in trailer parks serving whites in Illinois, Hispanics in New Mexico, and African Americans in North Carolina. By looking carefully at the daily lives of families who live side by side in rows of manufactured homes, Salamon and MacTavish draw conclusions about the importance of housing, community, and location in the families' dreams of opportunities and success as signified by eventually owning land and a conventional home. Working-poor rural



families who engage with what Salamon and MacTavish call the "mobile home industrial complex" may become caught in an expensive trap starting with their purchase of a mobile home. A family that must site its trailer in a land-lease trailer park struggles to realize any of the anticipated benefits of homeownership. Seeking to break down stereotypes, Salamon and MacTavish reveal the important place that trailer parks hold within the United States national experience. In so doing, they attempt to integrate and normalize a way of life that many see as outside the mainstream, suggesting that families who live in trailer parks, rather than being "trailer trash," culturally resemble the parks' neighbors who live in conventional homes.