Livingston, Sonja

The author describes the poverty she endured as one of seven children raised by a single mother in western New York. Discusses how girls in particular suffered in the cycle of poverty, and how she barely escaped.

"Meditations on loss, poverty, and becoming a woman in late 1980s America, and what it means to be human"--.

"At the Dreamland, women and girls flicker from the shadows to take their proper place in the spotlight. In this lyrical collection, Sonja Livingston weaves together strands of research and imagination to conjure figures from history, literature, legend and personal memory. The result is a series of essays that highlight lives as varied, troubled, and spirited as America itself. Harnessing the power of language, the award-winning essayist breathes life into subjects who lived extraordinary lives--as rule-breakers, victims, or those whose differences thrust them into view--bringing together those who slipped through the world largely unseen with those brought into public view, but even then, their images were often fleeting or faulty, so that they remain relatively obscure. Included are Alice Mitchell, a Memphis society girl who murdered her female lover in 1892, Maria Spelterini, who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1876, May Fielding, a 'white slave girl' buried in a Victorian cemetery, a trio of murder victims, an Irish ancestor, a child exhibited as a curiosity, the sculptors' model Audrey Munson, the Fox sisters, Valaida Snow, a Harlem Renaissance trumpeter and many more"--Provided by publisher.

Memoir of Sonja Livingston about her life as a woman growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s in America, discussing what she thought it meant to be a woman in those days, as well as presenting stories of what she learned from women she studied throughout her life--including Susan B. Anthony, the Virgin Mary in her Roman Catholic tradition, and Ally McBeal.

The author shares her story of poverty and hunger growing up in western New York and the challenges she and her siblings faced.