Kids At Work by Emir Estrada

   Few American teenagers have jobs these days; some blame it on the decline of retail, and others blame it on kids having too much homework. Emir Estrada, in an extensive study, finds that this is not the case with the children of Hispanic immigrants, often in this country illegally. In Los Angeles, a sizeable number of Hispanic kids work as vendors, under their parents’ tutelage, and still graduate high school. Though they attend school full-time, they spend afternoons and weekends minding the stalls (rarely licensed) and contribute to the household income, rarely cutting into their schoolwork. Though he believes the ethnic and cultural backgrounds are not the sole explanation for this phenomenon, he does find that it exists almost entirely among the Hispanic population, not the Chinese, Indians, Armenians, or Koreans in Los Angeles.

    This book got me thinking about the work-versus-school choice in this world, often debated in the UN. The image of third-world kids working instead of going to school always leaves us outraged, and why wouldn’t it? Why would anyone think it fair, that a teenager should have to work instead of going to school, losing any chance of a good future, and probably not even getting to enjoy the money he/she makes? But on the streets of LA, Hispanic teens are working and doing well in school. The author interviews a 13-year-old girl, who says that her peers have too much time on their hands, and it gets them in trouble. Her afterschool vending teaches her to communicate, focus, be aware, measure, keep accounts, be responsible for the goods, and stick to a schedule. While she (and other teen vendors) acknowledge that there are rude customers, the kids learn a valuable skill – communicating with adult professionals – which will serve the kids well in college applications and job interviews.

   One of the teen vendors, Adriana, allowed Estrada to print her schedule, listing her school arrival/departure times, he daily location of her stall (staggered, probably to avoid the cops) and the revenue for each day. While some kids make fun of her, most of them envy her. The chapter titled If I Don’t Help, Then Who Will is all about juggling work, school, and caring for siblings, and it can be highly educational. Some of the teens, like 18 year old Martha, lament the lack of leisure in their lives, especially since her classmates are all rich! She goes to a Catholic school, which her father pays for in full, and her vending gig allows him to devote his whole paycheck to her tuition and the mortgage. Her classmates assume her father is a drug dealer because she won’t say what he does, but at the same time, she has no idea how screwed up the Valley kids can be!

    I’d like to recount from personal experience, how I saw the results of kids having no work at all. A thirteen-year-old, from a rich family, had everything except skills. When it came time to apply to high schools, the essays were all about “afterschool activities that show dedication to learning” or “a skill that you could teach to others,” or “solving a serious problem on your own.” Now let’s see, what could this boy do? Playing Fortnite online was not going to impress the principal, nor would softball. He couldn’t cook, do laundry, or shop for groceries. In every upper-class family, it was the same thing; they spent all their time at school and homework, the housekeeper did the chores, and they spent their time playing video games, skateboarding, online, or in front of the tv. But then I had a student, Maria, who lived in a crammed apartment with her extended family, and had to help out in her father’s store. She wrote her essay about taking inventory, keeping the books, signing for deliveries, stacking the rack, cleaning floors, cleaning the sidewalk, getting rid of the bums, painting over graffiti, and sorting the produce. Needless to say, she had offers from a lot of good high schools.

    Remember the scene from Back to School, where Rodney Dangerfield schools the snobby professor on how to really run a business? Remember how the other students all turn to him and start taking notes, while he talks about all the under-the-table wrangling needed to build a factory? The reason he knows more than the professor of business is that he’s the only one there who’s ever been in business! If you go to an Ivy League school, the professors are all lifelong academics, but in a working class community college, the professors are all industry professionals. Your local junior college has instructors who have current work experience with the subjects they teach, and they know the score. This book dwells on the question of whether or not a young American can juggle work and good grades, and after reading this book, I say the answer is yes, they can! The reason they do well in school is that they have more to write about. They do well in math because they have to keep the accounts. They do well in social studies because they experience every known personality. They impress their teachers because they are not lazy. Let’s face it folks, work makes your schoolwork better.

Apple Tree: Writers on Their Parents

    I remember reading the essay On Seeing England for the First Time by Jamaica Kincaid, and that essay touches on all that she inherited (or didn’t) from her parents. One of the things they try to give her is their love of England, a place that (a) they never visited, (b) hadn’t given them anything, and (c) she rejects the first time she sees it. After reading Kincaid’s ode (or if you prefer, a fast eulogy) to England, I read Amy Tan’s essay Mother Tongue, which is also about the author’s parents. In Mother Tongue, Tan’s mother is taken for a fool when she doesn’t use English, when in fact she is quite shrewd. She uses the façade to trick snotty Anglo-Saxons into dropping their guard. In every memoir I’ve read, the author’s parents are a strong influence (for better or for worse) and in this collection, 25 authors recount their experiences with their parents. Yet in each essay, the influence can be one of acceptance or rejection.

    Not all of the essays in this book give much in the way of literary value, but the one by Angelique Stevens really got my attention. Her family moved constantly (like Jeanette Walls in The Glass Castle) and her mother an avid reader, yet she spent most of her daughter’s life in the looney bin (like Allen Ginsberg’s mother) in Rochester, New York. Now for those of you unfamiliar with Rochester, it’s a run-down and crime-ridden city in Upstate New York, right on Lake Erie, a prominent member of America’s Rust Belt. Like Swansea was to Dylan Thomas, Rochester is “the graveyard of ambition” on most levels. The author’s family lies in that graveyard, as her father was a lifelong alcoholic, and her sister became a prostitute to pay for a crack habit, but at least the author went to college at age 27. Her adult life consists of dealing with her parents’ breakdowns, and when they die, it’s of no issue to her; she treats her father’s burial as though she were giving away an old sofa. When her mother dies, she barely mourns, yet she is surprised by the great books found in the apartment – Hemmingway, Twain, Baldwin – that her mother kept on the shelf all her life. The first irony is that these cheap little books are desired by ragpickers more than clothes or furniture. The second irony is that all those writers came from dysfunctional families. Just like hers.

    Some of the authors, like Avi Steinberg, question their family traditions. Steinberg’s family moved around a lot (am I seeing a pattern here?) including a stay in Israel, where his mother was a zookeeper. She was also a bit of an underachiever, never staying in any place long enough to make a career for herself. Now here is where the author is unsure: was she a restless adventurer, or was she trying out every kind of job to find one that suited her? Then he goes into how Judaism is patriarchal, and the idols that the Rabbis despised were often female (okay, most Semitic deities are female) and it was the men who made the decisions. He uses, as an example, Rachel refusing to get off her seat because she was menstruating (another irony, because in biblical times, menstruation was the only excuse a woman had to disobey her husband). The author’s mother came from an abusive home, so the constant moves may have been a way to avoid structure and control. Both Stevens and Steinberg are the product of crazy intellectuals.

    I’m not so sure if it’s worth having Kyoko Mori’s essay in this collection, as she has written two books on the same story already. The first was her autobiography, published in the 1990’s, and then a teen novel, which was basically a fictionalization of the autobiography. She doesn’t offer much in the way of new insights into her abusive childhood, which I will not spend time going into. Most of the authors included in this book had a lousy experience while growing up, but so did a lot of other great memoirists. Tobias Wolfe wrote about his horrible childhood, and it became the 1988 memoir This Boy’s Life, now considered a classic. Jeanette Walls recounts her crazy childhood in The Glass Castle, and the recent memoir titled Educated, by Tara Westover, is all about growing up in a survivalist family in the mountains. Andre Dubus III (son of the great Andre Dubus II, and neither are featured in Apple Tree) wrote in his memoir about how his college professor father left the kids to suffer in a violent town. The memoir, titled Townie, is full of fights, parental neglect, and deprivation. Same thing with Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future. Same thing with David Smalls’ Stitches.

   In the grand scheme of memoir, I assume that a lousy childhood makes for great writing. But are there no writers out there with great childhoods? Is there no great memoirist whose life wasn’t stinky? Lucy Knisley’s Relish (okay, it's a comic, but it's still about her life) is a great celebration of food and eating. She learned good things from her parents, and while her childhood had ups and downs, the contrast between the enjoyable and the lousy were part of the learning. The contrast between good and bad creates a greater dynamic, and contrasts and conflict are a major part of literature. The great memoirs, like This Boy’s Life, are not just about having a lousy life, but surviving one.

   Stories that are only about bad things are not interesting, nor can we learn from them. You can’t know your life is bad unless you see a good one too.

Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol

    Vera, I feel your pain. I can relate to your experience at camp. It’s a time-tested American tradition, going to sleepaway camp for the summer and having a great time or a terrible time. You’re stuck out in the countryside with people you hardly know and you’re with them 24-7. You can’t go home at the end of the day, you can’t ask your parents for advice, and you have no privacy.

   Be Prepared is a graphic novel (though not really a novel because it’s not fiction) based on the author’s experience in a Russian camp in Connecticut. As an immigrant kid growing up in Albany, she doesn’t fit in with the rich kids, nor any other group for that matter. One of the saddest scenes in this book is her “failed sleepover” (also a time-tested American tradition) and the huge disappointment it brings. The scene sets the tone for the rest of the book, where the underprivileged kid becomes a social outcast. It’s a theme throughout the book; she always ends up being the kid who doesn’t get. As for the camp, I assumed it would be one of those young Pioneer camps they had in the USSR, but no, it’s no that kind of place. While it is Russian in terms of language, it’s run by the church, and not designed to foster economic and social equality.

    Brosgol captures the essence of childhood perfectly. Her eyes are almost as big as her face, enlarged by her oversized glasses, which seem to form a barrier against the world. Those huge eyes show all her hope, fear, anxiety, and hopelessness. In the sleepover scene, she goes from wide-eyed optimism to disappointment to being completely resigned. The artwork is perfect, with olive greens that give you the essence of nature. She also captures facial expressions and body language perfectly, making her mother look both resolute and feeble at the same time. When it comes to the portrayal of the kids, the author uses head size, posture, and facial expressions to show the age difference. Vera is only ten years old in the book, but she’s out in the bunk with fourteen-year-old girls, and as you guess, she feels outnumbered and invisible.

    Like I mentioned earlier, going to camp can be a source of happiness or pain. For Vera, she’s a kid from a less well-off family, whose mother is faced with two difficulties; first is her absent husband, and second are the children who want what they haven’t got. I can really relate to this, because I grew up around kids whose families were on a limited budget, and they felt guilty for asking for things that other kids had. At the same time, the parents had no idea that their kids were outcasts, and were trying desperately to fit in. You’re never sure if you should feel sympathy for the parents, or be annoyed because they’re feeble.

    I will recommend this book to kids over ten years old. It’s not hard to read, there are plenty of illustrations, and it has a story that kids can relate to.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

    "Just Kids" is predated by a 1995 biography of Maplethorpe and his relationship with Patti Smith. It takes you back to an era when bohemian life was possible, when there wasn't a great obsession with being a success, and people were satisfied with less. It was the 1960’s, a time when there were cheap apartments, abundant jobs, but also greater dangers. It wasn’t a safe time to be in Manhattan, but if you didn’t look like you had money, you might survive. If you did survive, life could be quite fun.

    Patti Smith came from a liberal family in a conservative town near Philadelphia. At the start of the memoir, she doesn't fit in with local mores and norms, so she takes a bus to Brooklyn and expects to stay with friends near the Pratt Institute. When she gets there, they've moved out, so she couch surfs and ends up with a dropout artist named Robert, who might be gay. For the next four years, they hop from one dirt-cheap pad to the next, eating one meal a day, and making art from cast-off junk.

    The title of "Just Kids" is perfect for the book. It's about young people doing what all young people dream of; living far from their parents, doing whatever they want, not having a care in the world, working just enough to support themselves. All those things were possible in 1968 New York. Rent was cheap, and as long as you didn't carry any valuables, you were relatively safe. Nowadays, however, I can't see any of this happening. If Patti and Robert had come to New York City (or even Brooklyn) in 2013, they'd never be able to live this way. The only cheap apartments are in the worst neighborhoods, and it would be a long commute from anything they’d want to do. The commute to work would be long, and you'd never be able to have an apartment on a bookstore clerk's salary. Would they mind living six to a tiny apartment in Williamsburg? Would they mind commuting from Brighton Beach all the way to Midtown? Would they be happy without an iPhone, a laptop, internet, gym membership, the latest footwear?

    Bohemian life doesn't flourish in this city the way it did in the 60's. Most of the so-called "hipsters" today live on money from their parents, but Patti and Robert lived in a bare-bones apartment with whatever furniture they could get, and when it came to clothes, they wore a weird mix of.....well I guess we could say they wore what they could get. Today's "hipsters" wear expensive clothing, eat in costly restaurants, and have high-priced technology.

    I give this book 4 stars instead of 5, only because it's repetitive. There's too much name-dropping about all her favorite poets, and that distracts from things. I would have like to have seen a greater description of the physical aspect of New York at the time.

Standing With Standing Rock: Voices From the #NoDAPL Movement

    Native Americans protests are nothing new, at least not since the 1970’s, but the mass protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline involves more than we’ve dealt with previously. Starting with the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, the protests involved Wounded Knee,  The Trail of Broken Treaties (1972) and the “Protect Our Peaks” movement (2004). These protests were about broken treaties, bad memories, and modern problems, issues like pollution, sovereignty, water rights, and funding, but the anti-DAPL movement is different; it involves every single issue, and not just one specific complaint.

    In Standing With Standing Rock, we have a collection of writings (essays, narratives, and poems) about the anti-DAPL effort and its significance. One entry to start with is The Great Sioux Nation and the Resistance to Colonial Land-Grabbing. The land-grabbing phenomena is nothing new in the USA, and it’s been a problem for all Americans, not just Native American people, thanks to eminent domain.  However, tribal reservation lands seem to get grabbed the most, and it’s not just for farming and ranching (the historical reason) or mining and drilling (the modern reason) but for things like golf courses. It isn’t just a problem in the USA, but in Canada as well, as we saw with the Oka protests in Quebec in the 1990’s. News stories of greedy stock and oil men, drooling over a tribe’s land, won’t shock anybody.

    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States) uses her essay on land-grabbing to show how the treaties between the tribes and the US government changed over time (usually with dismal results.) First there was the treaty with the plains tribes (1805) which was of no consequence, because there were few settlers west of the Mississippi. However, the fur trade soon began, and the US had more incentive to put forts in the area. She says that when the tribes found that they could trade furs for European guns, horses, and other goods, they became more dependent on them (though she doesn’t expressly mention it, I bet alcohol may have played a part.) Then you had farmers moving in, then gold was found, then oil, and because the country’s industries were resource-dependent, there was more incentive to break the treaties.

    Another point made by Dunbar-Ortiz is that the government kept the reservations scattered to keep them from unifying. There were six Sioux reservations, miles apart from each other, so it was difficult for them to work together. She also shows how giving the tribes the reservations was, is, and will be, akin to snatching a man’s property and giving him a cheap gift. Essentially it was “here’s a piece of land where you can hunt all you like, now we’ll take the rest of the land, and we’re sure you’ll be satisfied with what we’ve given you.” After looking at Google Earth/Map, and seeing the reservations, I really have to wonder why the Sioux (and other tribes) can’t have more space. The area surrounding the Pine Ridge reservation is unfarmed, unsettled, unbuilt, devoid of roads, and you can drive for miles without seeing anyone or anything. It’s not like anybody wants the land, seeing as it’s far away from anything. One would think the state of Nebraska would love to be rid of responsibility for it, and if it were given to the reservation, it would become the Fed’s problem. The answer may be in the origin of the treaty; Congress wouldn’t give away land they might need, and today they won’t risk losing the right to the minerals.

    Tribal sovereignty is another issue covered in this book, and a major bone of contention with regards to the DAPL. Maybe it seems trite to say it, because running a pipeline over anyone’s territory is bound to cause trouble (look at Ukraine for an example.) Andrew Curley’s essay Beyond Environmentalism is all about the way that the DAPL protests gained broad support, thanks to the mutual concern over ecology. He also writes on how the indigenous  people, once portrayed as backward and lazy, became the “noble ecologists” who lived with nature. He does, however, note that the image is still racist (remember the Crying Indian commercial?) and pigeonholes the people as one-dimensional. Still, he argues that the need to protect the land from pollution was the reason that the outsiders came in to help, and the outside help is usually attracted by a mutual benefit.

Of G-Men and Eggheads: The FBI and the New York Intellectuals

    This book isn’t as much about the New York intellectuals of the 50’s as it is about the politics of surveillance. According to the author, there was little protection against wiretapping until the 1990’s, so the FBI bugged homes and cars at will. The courts would not allow wiretaps to be used as evidence, but the FBI still listened in on Charles Chaplin, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Dr. King, and countless others. There’s irony in that too, because none of those men posed any real danger to the American people. I’m not surprised by the author’s revelations on FBI bugging, given that that Hoover and his henchmen were never warm to the intellectuals or activists. Nonetheless, this book raises questions on two issues; firstly, the threat that the targets actually posed, and secondly, the goals that the FBI had in mind.

    Lionel Trilling is prominent in this book, and in the greatest irony, he was suspected of being a Trotskyite. I say irony, because Trotsky was anti-Stalin, which the FBI plants (spies if you prefer) never realized. As for his years of teaching philosophy at NYU, he doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact. Dwight MacDonald, another forgotten intellectual, was another weird obsession for J. Edgar Hoover. Again, nothing gained by either side.

    This entire book has zilch to do with New York City or its intellectuals, so don’t bother. It’s an ineffectual book about ineffectual people.

Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by In America

    Let it be known, that Barabara Ehrenreich’s book is about three problems in American life; first, that minimum wage jobs are full of worker abuse, secondly, that they’re not enough to live on, and third, this is even more likely if you’re a woman. I’ve seen few women in the well-paid,  blue-collar jobs, like trucking, construction, cab driving, and restaurant kitchens. Here in New York City, some of the best-paid jobs for those with no college degrees are the building staff – doormen, concierges, and porters – with few women on staff. Let it also be known that the author does not survive off charity, and when she does get free food from a food bank, it’s crappy canned food and Hamburger Helper, full of salt.

Ehrenreich wrote this book in the early 2000’s, in order to see if the 1996 Welfare Reform had made things better or worse for the poor. She finds that the average minimum wage job is barely enough to support a single woman, and certainly wouldn’t be enough to feed the kids, rent more than one room, pay the medical bills, and eat well. Worse, there are towns where the only unskilled job is in Walmart, and she finds that Walmart abuses the employees and often tries to cheat them. In Florida, she takes a job waitressing at a restaurant where tourists go, and under the state laws she gets less than minimum wage; a common problem for tipped employees. While the customers are supposed to leave tips, many do not, and the employers rarely bother to obey the law and make up the difference. She tries working at a cleaning service, and here’s where she encounters another troubling factor. There’s a protocol for cleaning the bathrooms, and it requires a huge mental effort to learn the routine. Thanks to the high turnover rate, the boss can change your schedule at will and without notice. You can be at the end of your shift and be told to stay late and work at night. You have to pick your kid up from the babysitter? Too bad. You can’t get childcare with no notice? Too bad.

One of the more surprising things in this book is the drug testing of employees. I’ve only been drug tested twice in my life, once at Chase Manhattan Bank, and once by the Department of Education. None of the brokerage houses where I worked ever drug-tested me, and neither did the construction jobs or tutoring services. I find it surprising, because a construction company, with safety issues to consider, can least afford a worker with a drug problem. But Walmart? Would it make much difference? Another problem that a lot of poor neighborhoods are facing is what we call the criminalization of the poor. Parents can be fined if their children are absent from school, and face jail time if they haven’t got the money to pay. When you’re on the move from one homeless shelter to another, and have no transportation, getting your kid to school is a problem. If you need any kind of government aid, you can expect to be drug-tested.

Ehrenreich starts out her journey with only $1,000 and tells everyone she has a high school diploma. The question is whether the money she has with her will be enough to start off, and she finds that it isn’t. Her savings are barely enough to pay the deposit on an apartment, and local cheap hotels aren’t that cheap in the end. Renting a car costs more in the long run, but without the startup money to purchase one, she has no choice. The poor neighborhoods are food deserts, and the only food available is salt and fat.

There is a cure for the problem, and that is solidarity. People who live in a food desert can club together with someone who has a car, chip in for gas, and drive to a place with a cheap supermarket. Some people form food co-ops, so they can buy good quality food at wholesale prices. If several families live together in one home, they can gain two benefits; first is a lower living cost, and second is available childcare.  In the book Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street, the artists in Soho formed food co-ops, daycare co-ops, and others that provided home repair, homework help, art supplies, and more. The problem with charity is that it’s a “top-down” program, where the money on top can dictate, but solidarity is a “bottom-up” effort that allows the people to decide for themselves. It is my belief that this is why Jewish immigrants in the USA (and later Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants) did better than others. The Jews relied on each other for housing, food, education, and health, with benevolent lodges that provided emergency funds for medical bills and burial costs. You had three generations of a family living in one apartment, so the grandparents watched the kids while the parents worked 12 hour days.

In another book about poverty, Joanna Lipper’s Growing Up Fast, we see how a hotel employs women housekeepers while the cooks are all men, and while the women are paid a pittance, the male cooks eat well from the leftovers. Another difference is that the male cooks have a greater opportunity to work their way up the ladder, while a female cleaner can only be promoted to head housekeeper, with few levels in between. The cooks and the maids are on their feet all day, but the maids have to kneel and stoop. It’s a similar thing with construction; laborers don’t have to dress up, don’t have to buy expensive uniforms, and aren’t at the mercy of decent tips.

The end result is that the 1996 Welfare Reform law didn’t make things better. This book was published back in 2001 and is still read frequently, so it remains to be seen how the issues in this book will pan out in later generations. With the decriminalization of marijuana, there will be fewer people in prison, and thanks to bail reform, we’ll have fewer people missing work while they sit in the lockup.