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8. “Each and Every Single Story About Me . . . There’s Like a Huge Twist to It”: Growing Up at Risk in the United States—A Portrait of Mike
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Sean Crotty, Christopher Moreno, and Stuart Aitken 8 “Each and Every Single Story About Me . . . There’s Like a Huge Twist to It” Growing Up at Risk in the United States —A Portrait of Mike Home supervision is . . . no friends over . . . you can’t go outside, no telephone use, and no Internet. The mom is supposed to be the supervision over that. Like she decides if you get terminated [reported for violating home supervision rules] or not but, like, the home-supe officer is supposed to come over, like, every day and . . . check in on you. . . . [Once] I had a friend over when the actual officer came over. . . . Everything was cool. I’m glad I didn’t get locked up [sent back to Juvenile Hall]. These stories are so, like, complicated because there are so many twists to them. Like, each and every single story about me being locked up, there’s like a huge twist to it. —Mike, in response to Stuart’s question about his experiences with home supervision M ike is seventeen. He is handsome, with a sharp wit and a sense of humor that can light up a room. Mike’s mother, Debbie, was a drug addict when he was born and for the first eight years of his life. His father left when Mike was two years old and he has not seen him since. Debbie is now in her ninth year of recovery from twenty-four years of alcohol and methamphetamine addiction. As young children, Mike and his older brother suffered from severe neglect, and when adults were present there was often physical and emotional abuse. The family moved from place to place in California, most often residing in environments characterized by gangs, prostitution, and addiction. At times the family was homeless. 98 Chapter 8 Mike has been incarcerated in Juvenile Hall three times, primarily for stealing and vagrancy but also for behavioral problems at school, and on one occasion at the behest of his mother who believed that the experience would change his life. Mike’s story is a series of twists and contradictions. The story is resolutely embedded in his family’s local context and the larger influences (e.g., school, neighborhood redevelopment projects, neoliberal economic transformations ) that mold those contexts. The first twist came with his mother ’s recovery from alcohol and drug abuse. With recovery, Debbie took responsibility for herself and her family and, as part of this responsibility, she became involved in neighborhood and community affairs. For the past eight years, Mike has lived in El Cajon, California, in an apartment complex that his mother manages. The apartment complex is sandwiched between a gentrifying downtown, a state courthouse, and residential neighborhoods marked by drug dealers and gangs. Drug free due in large part to Debbie’s efforts, their apartment complex is, in many ways, a haven of hope carved out of an otherwise forgotten and derelict landscape. Mike and his brother are part of those changes. Mike is a devoted son and, to the degree afforded a seventeen-year-old of meager means in today’s neoliberal consumer-oriented society, a responsible member of the local community of which he is part. Mike’s story is not one of unmitigated redemption, but one of energy, passion, and hopefulness. In some ways, Mike’s story mirrors neoliberal ideals that speak to the creation of citizens who are autonomous, free, and responsible for their choices. And this suggests another twist: the state encourages people to develop this kind of citizenship while rolling back the means for people like Debbie and Mike to achieve success. We argue that Mike and Debbie are in this place of responsibility and hope in spite of neoliberal agendas that diminish state support for their welfare. This, of course, is a contested and problematic “illness-and-remedy” that constitutes contemporary neoliberal globalization. Economies and systems of governing and education are not the only things to be restructured under neoliberalism: important twists occur when parents and children undergo a form of restructuring of their own as they resist, adapt to, and rework the changing circumstances of their daily lives. Reworkings at the individual and family scale then unleash a number of complex, contradictory, and unexpected changes that may, in turn, affect the economies and systems of governing and education . As a consequence, the outcomes of neoliberal economic restructuring are not always anticipated. The imaginative twists in Mike’s history and geography (and his daily life...