Workin’ It (Women Living Through Drugs And Crime)

Margaret, Charlie, Virginia, Tracy, and Laquita are all drug users involved in regular criminal activity: prostitution, burglary, shoplifting, robbery, drug selling, petty theft, and various kinds of fraud. Four of the women are black; one is white and Puerto Rican. While all five have been involved in same-sex relationships, three are primarily straight and two are primarily lesbian. They come from working-class or welfare families; some women characterize their mothers as strict, abusive, intolerant, and distant while other mothers are characterized as concerned, religious, and loving. The women talk frankly about their drug use, their sexual and criminal activities, their childhoods, their school and work experiences, their neighborhoods, their personal relationships with their families of origin, children, and partners, their fears and future goals, and the ordinary trapping of their lives.

These women share a web of experiences created out of race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, drug use, and urbanization that provides them with meaning and courage. They speak movingly about guilt and responsibility, about rape and intimacy, and about ambition and despair. Through their stories, we can grasp the traumas and turning points that lead us all to make bad decisions as well as those ideals and inspirations that can help to redeem us.