No shame in my game
Subtitle: the working poor in the inner city
By: Katherine S. Newman.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Knopf and the Russell Sage Foundation
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 388
Subjects: Urban poor -- United States; Urban poor -- Employment -- United States; Working poor -- United States; Inner cities -- United States
Description: In No Shame in My Game, anthropologist Katherine Newman presents a view of inner-city poverty radically different from that commonly accepted. The all-too-prevalent picture we get of the poor today - in the media, in the political sphere, and in scholarly studies - is of alienated minorities living in big-city ghettos, lacking in values and family structure, criminally inclined, and permanently dependent on government handouts.

What Newman reveals, however - as she focuses on the working poor in Harlem, one of the country's most depressed urban areas - is a community of people who are committed to earning a living, struggling to support themselves and their families on minimum-wage dead-end jobs, and clinging to the dignity of a regular paycheck, no matter how meager.

For two years, Professor Newman and her assistants followed people in Harlem - from work to school to the streets to their homes - and spent hundreds of hours talking to employees, and their bosses and supervisors, their friends and families. From observations and interviews, we come to understand not only the essential contribution that low-wage earners make to the survival of poor households, but also the ways in which these jobs affect young people's attitudes, prospects, and self-image.

Most powerfully, we listen as low-wage earners speak about their jobs, their ambitions, and their values - especially their devotion to family and belief in the work ethic.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-376) and index.