![]() ![]() I was seeing so many teen moms in homeless shelters who told me that they were told to leave high school because the school “did not have insurance” or the “elevator wasn’t working.” The interns at NYCLU pretended they were teen moms and called 28 high schools in New York City and only six would let them in. Katherine Arnoldi: In 2000, I started, with New York Civil Liberties Union, a class action lawsuit against the New York City Board of Education for coercing teen mothers to leave high school. Along with Atlas of the Human Heart (2003), both by Ariel Gore. The Hip Mama Survival Guide (1998) is a great inspiration, too. The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom, which I copied myself and tried to distribute at GED programs and, later, at Charas Community Center on the Lower East Side where I was running a Single Mom College Program in the mid-1990s could actually become a book. I saw the sun come up and was never the same the book inspired me to believe that my little zine cartoon book. ![]() When I first read it, I finished it in one sitting, then opened it and read it again. ![]() Beverly Donofrio’s Riding in Cars with Boys (1990) was a great inspiration to me. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) has a teenage mother. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) has a teenager who gives birth but the child does not live. The last sentence is my favorite last sentence in all of literature. ![]() Her “I Stand Here Ironing” is, to me, the best short story ever written and I have committed it to memory just from so many readings. Tillie Olsen, who was a teenage mother and whose first publication at Partisan Review came the year she gave birth is the mother of us all. Katherine Arnoldi: It is rare to see young mothers in literature, but there are writers who have inspired me. ![]()
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