Paulette Brown

     When author Barbara Ehrenreich set out to research her best selling expose’, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, she decided to try to understand how the “other half lives.” “How in the world,” she wondered “do millions of women around the nation engage in work that absorbs all of [their] energy and intellect and yet leaves them always at risk of financial, physical, and emotional ruin?” I could have saved Ms. Ehrenreich a lot of research, time and money by telling her my story. I have worked very hard for most all of my life; I have worked in all of the minimum wage jobs  with all the cruelty, pain and despair of low-wage manual labor that Ehrenreich so accurately (and often humorously) describes; and in the end, my life, my family and our futures were at great risk and evidently carried little value in the more financially privileged and secure world.
     After working full-time, without a break my entire adult life, at the age of 41, I suffered a heart attack. I had no savings, no medical insurance, and no job security and according to many, very little to be proud of as a single mother of two, dependent for our very lives on Social Service support. It seemed as though I had no pathway, no future and little hope. Life looked very bleak.
     Yet, to draw on a cliché, sometimes what looks like devastation ends up being a blessing in disguise. At the very bottom, without hope or a future, I refused to give up and instead came to understand that a college education and the monetary security that career employment assures, is exactly what I want, need, and will somehow secure. I entered college in the fall of 2003. Beginning to earn a college degree has changed my life and that of my sons in amazing ways. Today, despite my heart attack, I am on a new pathway; I am definitely upward bound, filled with energy, vision and hope.
     I had always been a bright woman; as a child and as an adult I read much of the time, and have always been an active everyday learner and concerned parent and citizen. Even while employed in exhausting, mind-numbing work - as a bus driver, a taxi driver, a waitress, an enlisted medical assistant, and a maid - I tried to continue to read, think and be intellectually engaged, although this was sometimes an impossible task. This love of learning came in handy as I began a year in The ACCESS Project at Hamilton College. Here, supported and embraced by teachers, administrators and support staff, I have been able to blossom as a student, a thinker, an employee, and a parent. Every day I have learned and grown, become proactive and organized, and clarified my pathway for our future. Being in school has shown me that with hard work we can reach our goals, and that with an education, a good work ethic, and a little help I can be a stable, productive, successful and fulfilled professional. College has helped me to be an engaged, active and committed parent, community member and worker. This is a lesson that I have taken to heart and one that is certainly not lost on my sons.

Photo Exhibit

A nationally touring exhibit of 50 framed, museum quality, color photographs coupled with narratives created by students who are welfare eligible, single parents changing their lives through the pathway of higher education.  The installation presents a unique view of poverty from insiders’ perspectives and reframes the cultural (de)valuations of poor single parents vis-à-vis family, work and higher education in the United States today. View the Gallery Guide.