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Chapter 14. Work Worries: Tina & Dante
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Chapter 14 WorkWorries: Tina & Dante Tina is raising her two daughters and two of her nieces after their mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She rents a small row house that’s part of a suburban public housing project just outside of the District . She is acutely aware of the value of education, and her children are all good students. She moved her family out of the District six years ago for her children’s education. The housing project that she lives in is a small part of what is an otherwise fairly wealthy district, so the school her kids go to has excellent resources.1 Although she works full-time in a furniture shop, selling upscale items she herself cannot afford, she is enrolled in a master’s degree program in child development and hopes to use it to get a better job in education or public policy. Tina’s husband, Dante, was ‹rst arrested and charged for involvement in a drug-related shooting. Although he maintains his innocence, he refused to give evidence against the person he claims is responsible, and he received an eight-year sentence. Once incarcerated, he became politically active and was involved in a number of protests, two of which turned into prison riots, earning him considerable additional time. His case is currently being appealed, and his family and his pro bono attorney are hopeful that his original sentence will be overturned. If that does happen, the subsequent offenses will also be voided because they will have occurred as a result of a wrongful incarceration. Despite his claim of wrongful imprisonment, Dante is philosophical about his incarceration. As he describes it, while he was not guilty of murder, he did commit many crimes. Prison allowed him to discover God through his Muslim faith and to join a community of serious and thoughtful men devoted to family, community, and justice. He believes 189 Work Worries his experience has made him a better person, father, and friend. Indeed, he sees the dif‹culties he has had since his incarceration as entirely distinct from his earlier criminal life, related instead to his political activism and the protests that he led while incarcerated. This perspective helps him to cope with his incarceration, and he is a strikingly con‹dent person, despite his loss of autonomy. Tina also appears con‹dent. She speaks quickly and with self-assurance , and at ‹rst her manner suggests an optimism that is indefatigable . Her husband’s incarceration for the last ten years, however, has taken its toll. Tina is proud of Dante, valuing him as a partner and a good parent to her children. In part because of her pride in him, she did not tell any of her friends at work about his incarceration. When he was ‹rst incarcerated, she was new at her government job and feared risking her security clearance. “I was at the Pentagon, so, of course, I didn’t want them to know my business. So I would just always say he was in the military.” Of‹ce conversation, however, is such that personal business is hard to protect.2 Even though they didn’t know he was in prison, they could tell the weekends that I’d seen him. It was hardest at the beginning of the week, ’cause I’d have seen him [at the prison and would be missing him]. So my friends want to know, “Well, when are you gonna see him?” You have to lie about why you’re having a bad day. So they’re like, “Why are you crying?” And I gotta lie. At work, where people knew she was married but did not know that her husband had been incarcerated, her sense of loss was particularly acute. But added to it was also a sense of the stigma that her husband’s status might carry. Many women described withdrawing from the casual friendships they made at work, always steering conversation in another direction when discussion of their husband, son, or brother came up. But this could be extremely dif‹cult. One woman described how what under different circumstances would be welcome friendships were instead threatening and frustrating: See, I’m distorting the whole picture for them. And then I ran into a coworker on the subway. “Oh! Where’s your husband? How is he?” I [54.158.248.39] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:27 GMT) said, “You’re always asking me about my husband. Why? Are you interested in my...