San Antonio College Library

"This collection explores the dynamics of the modern, middle-class American family and its near-constant state of transition. The editors introduce the book by situating it within the context of work, family, and ethhographic research on middle-class families in the United States. Emerging and established scholars contributed chapters based on their original field research, following each chapter with a personal reflection on doing field work. The...

Alice feels inadequate both because she is snubbed by a clique that has false standards and because she discredits her own good qualities. This story shows the growing pains of a high school girl who failed to crash small-town society.

The relationship between mothers and daughters has been the subject of much research and study, in such fields as psychoanalysis, sociology, and women's studies. But rarely has the history and evolution of this relationship been examined. In The Anchor of My Life Linda W. Rosenzweig draws on a wide range of primary sources - letters, diaries, autobiographies, prescriptive advice or "self-help" literature, and fiction - to reveal the historical nuances...

Taking readers into the homes of middle-class families to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life, the author describes the profound moral conflicts for parents who take on enormous debts and gamble on an investment that might not pay off.

"In the title story, a daughter, hoping to find whatever it is that keeps her traveling salesman father out on the road, leaves home in a stolen car." "In "Thanatology," Noreen, a level-headed teenager, tries to bring a realistic perspective to her dreamy and impractical mother Tish, who is having an affair with her boss who is also the father of one of Noreen's classmates." "In "Mental," two sisters, perhaps a little unbalanced themselves, try to...

"Deep within the American Dream lies the belief that hard work and steady saving will ensure a comfortable retirement and a better life for one's children. But in a nation experiencing unprecedented prosperity, even for many families who seem to be doing everything right, this ideal is still out of reach. In The Financial Diaries, Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider draw on the U.S. Financial Diaries, a project which follows the lives of 235 low-...

"Ex-basketball player Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo and a second grandchild. His son, Nelson, is behaving erratically and his wife, Janice, decides in mid-life to become a working girl. As, through the winter, spring and summer of 1989, Reagan's debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live."

Tristana is a novel where love, hate and power converge into a triangle of domination and frustration. Tristana, a young woman subjected to the rule of the tyrannical Don Lope, idealistically tries to find her purpose in life but she ends up trapped by the rules of a world dominated by men who only see her as the object of their desire.