Singlewide : chasing the American dream in a rural trailer park / Sonya Salamon and Katherine MacTavish.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Salamon, Sonya, author.

MacTavish, Katherine, 1963- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mobile home living--United States.

Mobile home living.

Mobile home parks--United States.

Mobile home parks.

Rural poor--Housing--United States.

Rural poor.

Housing, Rural--United States.

Housing, Rural.

United States--Rural conditions.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In Singlewide, Sonya Salamon and Katherine MacTavish explore the role of the trailer park as a source of affordable housing. America's trailer parks, most in rural places, shelter an estimated 12 million people, and the authors show how these parks serve as a private solution to a pressing public need. Singlewide considers the circumstances of families with school-age children in trailer parks serving whites in Illinois, Hispanics in New Mexico, and African Americans in North Carolina. By looking carefully at the daily lives of families who live side by side in rows of manufactured homes, Salamon and MacTavish draw conclusions about the importance of housing, community, and location in the families' dreams of opportunities and success as signified by eventually owning land and a conventional home. Working-poor rural families who engage with what Salamon and MacTavish call the "mobile home industrial complex" may become caught in an expensive trap starting with their purchase of a mobile home. A family that must site its trailer in a land-lease trailer park struggles to realize any of the anticipated benefits of homeownership. Seeking to break down stereotypes, Salamon and MacTavish reveal the important place that trailer parks hold within the United States national experience. In so doing, they attempt to integrate and normalize a way of life that many see as outside the mainstream, suggesting that families who live in trailer parks, rather than being "trailer trash," culturally resemble the parks' neighbors who live in conventional homes.

Contents:

Introduction : galvanized ghettoes

The mobile home industrial complex

Making ends meet, family finances

The Illinois park : closer to the middle class

The North Carolina parks : near ties that bind of kin and church

The New Mexico parks : a dream rooted in place

Youth and trailer park life

Reforming the mobile home industrial complex

Conclusion : family dreams and trailer park realities.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-5017-0968-2

OCLC:

973733460