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Hard Living on Clay Street

Portraits of Blue Collar Families

Joseph T. Howell

In this revealing study of a white, working-class neighborhood in Washington, D.C., Howell shows us that there is more than one kind of blue-collar worker in America today. Hard Living on Clay Street is about two very different blue-collar families, the Shackelfords and the Mosebys. They are fiercely independent southern migrants, preoccupied with the problems of day-to-day living, drinking heavily, and often involved in unstable family relationships. Howell moved to Clay Street for a year with his wife and son and became deeply involved with the people, recording their story. As readers, we too become participants in the life of Clay Street, and not just observers, learning what “living on Clay Street” is all about.
 

$23.95 list, 381 pages

10-digit ISBN: 0-88133-526-6

13-digit ISBN: 978-0-88133-526-2

© 1973

“No soap opera tangles the gold web of life more effectively than these genuine humans do, and not half so fast.” —Washington Post

“. . . it is above all an intensely immediate, even gripping, account of daily life among the white urban poor.” —Ms. Magazine

“Never again will you find yourself easily able to put down the people whose hopes and fears, dreams and disappointments, violences and loves, inhabit this book.” —The New Republic

“In living with and becoming part of what he studies, Howell developed an understanding and compassion that illuminates every page, and which dramatically raise Hard Living from the status of sociologic monograph to a much larger and deeper story of human motivation and striving.” —Rolling Stone

“Even more vivid than Tally’s Corner, it follows real, if disguised, people through concretely realized days and years.” —The Washingtonian

Table of Contents

Preface 1991

Introduction

1. The Shackelfords: A Hard Living Family

2. The Mosebys: A Family Caught Between

3. Hard Living in Perspective

Conclusion

Epilogue

Epilogue 1991

Appendix: Notes on Methodology