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I was raised in Washington State. My mother left her husband in
Virginia and took a train to Spokane where I was born. I have
never heard from nor ever met my father. My mother remarried and
we moved to Seattle when I was two years old.
I was boarded out until I was twelve years old. I would run away
to try to visit my mother. I know what it feels like to not be
allowed in the living room and to be forced to eat meals on the
back steps. I know what it feels like to have to march up and down
the sidewalk carrying a sign saying �I am a thief� because one of
my mother�s boy friends gave me 25 cents and the people who were
boarding me did not believe me when I told them.
My mother divorced her husband and I moved in with her when I was
about twelve. We lived in an apartment. We were poor and so were
our neighbors. I didn�t know anybody who lived in a house. I was
ashamed of my clothes compared to other school mates who dressed in
the latest style. Nothing I or my friends who lived near me had
was ever good enough for society we lived in. Nothing we did
was ever good enough for our teachers, our landlords, our parent�s
current romantic visitors. We were outcasts to many people and we
bonded with one another, making us even greater outcasts.
My dilemma comes when comfortable, traditionally raised individuals
think they know all about �the poor�--�The disadvantaged.� They
know so much from books, from their reasoning ability. How can I
convince them that we who were there are worth listening to -- and
most especially that as bad as it was, we believed if we worked
hard enough we could get out of the inner city. The people who are
trapped there now don�t have the same belief. Our society now
makes it clear that poor folks in the inner city will never get out,
no matter what they do.
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