Word: sheehans
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Other Crimson runners were sophomore Ed Sheehan, number 11 at 26:02, number 12 Chuck Ferrell at 26:04, and Brian Dunn, who came in fourteenth...
...surface, it is an extremely impressive journalistic work. Sheehan spent over a year with her subject and seems to know everything one in her position possibly could about the woman--Carmen Santana--and her daily routines. But, as extensive as her knowledge may be, she keeps to herself what is no doubt the most fascinating and necessary aspect of a welfare mother's life--her emotions--and instead shares with us only what pertains to her economic survival...
This is not to claim Sheehan's work useless; she has found, after a grueling and frustrating search (as she describes in an afterword) a woman who allowed her, and, vicariously, the reader, into her home, to observe, to question and to describe. Sheehan is familiar enough to be there when Santana discovers her son is mainlining heroin; but is that so routine that Santana accepts it in stride, without a moan or a whimper even? So it appears from the description the reader is offered...
THOUGH ON THE WHOLE this approach further stereotypes a welfare mother's lot, Sheehan does include some perceptions that hold our interest in this welfare mother. Santana does not worry about her so-called cheating of the welfare system, accepting extra money from the man she lives with and collecting for one child more than lives at home, because she needs it--there is no other way for her to get by. Similarly, she does not preoccupy herself with what an outsider may think of a welfare mother who does not even attempt to work; she has learned that...
...Sheehan spent nearly two years with Santana, and hardly penetrated the pedestrian facts and figures of her life. Her view of welfare through an entirely maternal lens is tragically blind to the violent conflict and controversy surrounding the welfare system today...