Can't Catch a Break

Prof. Susan Starr Sered, Prof. Maureen Norton-Hawk

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780520282780
• eBook ISBN: 9780520958708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can't Catch a Brea k 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. As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/.

Table of contents

• Cover
• CAN’T CATCH A BREAK
• Title
• Copyright
• 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