Lessons: On Growing Up Poor

There is something about about growing up working-poor that I learned to live with and that is, I learned to create a distance between our socio-economic status in life and us. Today I write about having grown up working-poor and mi papi gets really defensive because he feels like I am saying that he did not do a good job as a provider, which is not at all what I intend to comment on when I write. I write about growing up working-poor because there is something to be said about a society that allows children to go hungry, section 8 housing to have years-long waitlists, and the money-related stresses that are conducive to poor health that I think is a social problem and not an individual problem.

Growing up working-poor meant constantly pretending we were not poor. My parents painted our shoes, washed our sneakers, mended our clothes as soon as a tear was detected, and always bought bigger sizes in everything so that they would last longer. The trick about growing up working-poor was never looking poor. I had nice Sunday shoes, and my Sunday dresses that I was not allow to get dirty so I could not play in these clothes and shoes. I was taught that I was to create an illusion and cleanliness, not having any holes, not having any tears, and everything not looking too worn had everything to do with that illusion. I had play clothes that were ragged, torn jeans and torn shirts but I was also not allowed to go outside with them. That was for private playtime. Because our neighbors, despite them being from a similar socio-economic status, were not allowed to see our poverty.

Also there were behavioral things that we did to pretend that we were not poor. I remember my abuelitas neighbor was a single-mother of about five boys. I thought she was the most fun adult person I knew; her youngest son was someone I considered my best friend and his name was Armando. When we were five or six, nobody cared that we played together but visiting my abuelitas house when we were around 10 or 11 meant that I was banned from hanging out with him. He was suddenly considered a nio de la calle, and I was not allowed to associate myself with him. I was an indoor kid, a kid that was bien cuidada, therefore despite our similar class status we created hierarchies of good poor, and bad poor. Myfamily fought for that good poor status: we did not associate with criminals, we went to church, our word was our Bible, the children were taken care of properly, we did not curse, we worked hard, and the list went on and on and on.

As I grew older, and we migrated to the USA, I remember I too began to actively create that illusion. I began to tell my peers lies about mi papis income, explained away my free lunches as mi papi doing some tax shortcuts because we were smart NOT poor. I would save a lot of money for months to be able to buy that one American Eagle jacket so I could fit in and look NOT poor. Material things became my tools for gaining that respect that only middle and upper middle class families were granted. Being from a working-poor family was shameful and a joke, to the kids I knew growing up, and everyone knew having money was a good thing. And since we did not have money, lying about having money was the next best thing. So I worked hard at it creating an image to gain what I thought was respect but really was compliance to upholding the class hierarchies.

Now in my adulthood, I am constantly tasking myself with not upholding the narratives that essentially keep working-poor people worried about things that should not matter. I have to remind myself that working-poor folks try to hold on to some level of dignity when the state has abandoned them. I have to remind myself to give myself grace as a person whose a product of a shitty system, and stand up for communities like the one I grew up in.