Hard Living On Clay Street Book Talk Hard Living on Clay Street is a must read for anyone living in our area. Published originally in 1972, the book is a portrait of white working and welfare class families at the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A work of narrative non-fiction, this classic sociology text reads like a novel. The author, Joe Howell, is my father. I moved to Mount Rainier with my family six years ago, and we are finally getting around to hosting a book club this winter. In 1970 my mother and father lived on Otis Street where my father was employed as a “participant observer” in a large government research project, the purpose of which was to understand the needs and life styles of low income, working class, white people. At that time Mount Rainier was virtually 100% white, and it had the lowest median income of any predominantly white municipality in the Mid Atlantic region. He ended up writing this book about some of the families he knew. The book was published initially by Doubleday and is now available on line as a Waveland Press book (and can be found on Amazon). It has been in continuous print and is considered one of the classic urban sociology studies. I would like to invite you to read Hard Living On Clay Street (if you havent already) over the next month and then join us on February 28th at 3 pm for a discussion with Joe and Embry. Of course, if you dont have time to read it, feel free to join us in any case. We will discuss the context and characters of the book, as well as how race, class, and daily life have evolved for folks in Mount Rainier (and America) over the past 45 years. Please message me directly if you are interested in attending our discussion. Depending on the amount of interest, we will try to meet at Urban Eats or another local venue, or our home on 29th Street. I will repost specifics here as we get closer to the date, and send an evite to any who reply. Hope to see you there! Jessica R. H. Ellis 29th Street
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:32:51 +0000
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