addicted.pregnant.poor

For the addicted, pregnant, and poor women living in daily-rent hotels in San Francisco's Mission district, life is marked by battles against drug cravings, housing debt, and potential violence. In this stunning ethnography Kelly Ray Knight presents these women in all their complex humanity and asks what kinds of futures are possible for them given their seemingly hopeless situation. During her four years of fieldwork Knight documented women's struggles as they traveled from the street to the clinic, jail, and family court, and back to the hotels. She approaches addicted pregnancy as an everyday phenomenon in these women's lives and describes how they must navigate the tension between pregnancy's demands to stay clean and the pull of addiction and poverty toward drug use and sex work. By creating the space for addicted women's own narratives and examining addicted pregnancy from medical, policy, and social science perspectives, Knight forces us to confront and reconsider the ways we think about addiction, trauma, health, criminality, and responsibility.

Author: Kelly Ray Knight
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 10/27/2015
Pages: 328
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780822359968

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2016

About the Author
Kelly Ray Knight is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.