Jennifer Friedman
Associate Professor
Contact
Office: CPR 230
Phone: 813/974-2672
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Personal Bio
Like many young children, I loved spending time with horses. I was a "barn rat" which meant that I worked at the stables for my chance to ride other peoples' horses. I found all the tasks inspiring -- feeding, watering, scrubbing buckets, mucking out stalls, grooming and healthcare. Riding high-strung horses, however, was a special treat and quite challenging. On one chilly morning, my riding mentor brought me a notebook and pen and told me that I was next to ride Cassie, a small half-Arabian horse who often spooked by arching her back while simultaneously jumping to the side all in a matter of seconds. My task was to observe everything I could because I was next to ride this mare. I paid special attention to the horse's demeanor, as well as the trainer's body language, posture, position in the seat -- anything that could cue me on how not to land in the dirt as so may riders had before me. What I didn't realized at the time was how this nurturing of my powers of observation at such an early age sowed the seeds for developing a sociological eye.
While I rode horses in a small conservative country town, I grew up in a large suburb of Miami, a city that is home to numerous ethnic and racial groups. In my neighborhood, it was not uncommon for households to hire domestic workers from Latin America. Although I remember fondly the Nicaraguan woman who cared for me as a young child, I also saw how she left her own young daughter each day with her mother so that she could work. Spending many hours with domestic workers around my neighborhood, I felt close to them and learned about their stories. I laughed with them and felt saddened by so many events that created such hardships for them. It was hard for them to survive economically, create and manage families within and across borders, and make wise decisions to purchase desperately needed American products to send back home. Their history has been etched in my memory and perhaps has been one of the driving forces for the particular kind of sociology that I do. I like to think of my work as sociological activism--sensitive to racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic inequities.
As a young teen, I further developed my observational and critical thinking skills when I traveled internationally with my family. I saw the poverty and dismal living conditions in Eastern Europe and the creative ways people challenged governmental oppression. I remember one Bulgarian woman's thirst for knowledge when she eagerly, and yet apprehensively, accepted the Time magazine that my father offered her. I saw the ruins of concentration camps, the gas chambers, and the remnants of human bodies that had been made into lampshades and soap. From military personnel who were the first to free the concentration camps, I heard about the devastation and loss of spirit among Jewish holocaust survivors. And while on a boat from Greece to Israel, I remember stories from a Vietnam veteran who told my father about the horrors he saw during the war as well as his addiction to heroin and methadone.
Piecing together various parts of my history, it becomes clear what I bring to my career as a sociologist. I have spent my life listening to peoples' stories and observing how they create their lives under diverse social and environmental conditions. Police officers, mother-daughter relationships, Latinas, alcohol, heroin, and methadone users have all sparked my interest. With my book, Surviving Heroin: Interviews with Women in Methadone Clinics finished, I now turn my attention to a life history of a Puerto Rican mother of six and grandmother named "Millie." I have taken a rather non-traditional approach in this life history, as I never asked Millie a question (and if I did, she never answered it). Instead, I have listened to and observed this former heroin user, now on methadone, who is HIV-positive as she creatively survives on the brink of poverty. Her story is a testament to the ingenuity and resilience of those who reside on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
I remember the day when Millie received a set of pots and pans through mail order. She immediately asked me how much I thought she should sell it for. I replied "well, it's brand new so you should sell it for what you paid for it." She explained to me how mail ordering allows her to get cash: She purchases an item and then has 6 months to pay for it. Then she purchases another item and uses the money she receives from the second item to pay for the first item. This is just one of many skills that Millie has acquired in order to survive in poverty. Millie has also spent her life challenging the kinds of stories that the media, methadone clinics, and her own community would choose to tell about her as a former heroin user. In her written story, she describes the numerous traumas she experienced as a poor woman of color. She believes that what has come to be defined as her "disease" (heroin addiction) is integrally connected to the larger social ills of racism, sexism, classism and heterosexism. Refusing to fit herself into the traditional monolithic picture of a woman heroin user, Millie celebrates motherhood by care giving to her family, friends, and larger community.
As I write about Millie's life, my work connects me with numerous institutions and departments on campus. I have been asked to speak in the Department of Women's Studies, the Institute for Caribbean and Latin American Studies, the Department of Fine Arts, and the School for Public Health. I am integrally involved with the Criminology and Anthropology Departments as well as the School of Education. I also work regularly with graduate students from many departments, helping them to gather and analyze their field notes. It is through students' notes, that I have learned, for example, about fire fighters, tattoo artists, female adolescent migrant farm workers, pathologists, residential facilities, sex education classes for unwed teen mothers, and midwifery. Guiding students in their analyses of diverse identities enriches my perspective as a sociologist.
Education
Ph.D.,Northwestern University, 1988
Current Courses