Reviewed here: What Would the World Be Without Women: Stories From the 9th Ward by Waukesha Jackson
Soft Skull Press 2005
ISBN1-933368-32-2
87 pages

After reading the four previous volumes in The Neighborhood Story Project, I thought I had a fairly clear understanding of what the authors were seeking to accomplish with their books. All of the teen authors did very good jobs at showing what life in their parts of the city of New Orleans was like, and their books certainly go a long way towards explaining how the city fell apart so quickly after the levees broke. But Waukesha Jackson’s book is the first one to move beyond the initial neighborhood assignment and offer insight into the more universal problems of drug addiction and poverty.

In What Would the World Be Without Women, Jackson writes about the many women living in the Ninth Ward who are the sole support of their families. She also writes about how they interact with the larger community and are significant forces of social change in the neighborhood. While it might seem that the book stems from standard feminist origins or long-known statistics about single parent minority families, Jackson is actually writing from a far more personal and powerful place. Her book is first and foremost the story of her family and, as such, it is an amazing look at the relationship between children and a drug-addicted parent.

From the very beginning, Jackson explains that in “my entire life my mom has been on and off drugs, and I have been with and without a mother.” With her two brothers, Jackson has shuttled back and forth, living part of the time with her mother and when that was impossible, with her grandmother. As she recalls her childhood, Jackson is brutally honest, writing:

There were times I was left inside alone and hungry. There were days I would wake up without my mom and nights I didn’t sleep. I had to sit there and think of places where I thought she would go and I would call and they would always say that she just left or wasn’t there when I knew that she was right there.

Because her mother asked her to, Jackson learned to lie to her grandmother and provide cover for her absent parent. She dressed herself and fixed her own hair even as a preschooler and spent a lot of time wishing “that she would think of her kids and just drop her bad habit, but it never happened." Eventually, after five good years that were followed by a colossal fall back into drug use, Jackson found herself with thoughts she never imagined:

Sometimes I wished – God forgive me – that she was dead, just to know she was in a stable place. I would never have to call for her or wonder where she was because she would be six feet under the cement.

The interview between Jackson and her mother, Pamela Mack, is full of moments where one corrects the other and emotions ride high. At some points it is clear that Jackson is looking for answers from her mother that she will never get such as when she asks her why she left the children alone for days at a time. Mack goes out of her way to justify her behavior in an exchange that shows she still believes that by leaving she was doing the right thing.

Well, let me tell you like this: I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I do know that if I started using and I didn’t want y’all to see me, I would leave. You know, I would leave. I never wanted to look direct in y’all face so … I never really … I never leave y’all unless I felt as though one of y’all was about to get up, and then I had to leave, you know.

And then when I left, and if I didn’t stop or I felt I looked too bad, I just wouldn’t come back, you know. I knew at one point y’all would go right down the street by your Maw Maw or that y’all would call her and let her know that I’m not there and she will come down and get y’all so then I knew – I felt that y’all was okay. And so I just didn’t come back. I was embarrassed, I was hurting and stuff like that.

Jackson demands a lot of answers from her mother in the interview, and presses the issue about what happened to them when they were left alone.

How do you think we felt when you left for days?

I knew you all were hurt. I knew after being gone for just maybe two hours, that two hours was too long away. You know, especially when y’all don’t know where I’m at. If y’all don’t know where I’m at, y’all know I’m getting loaded.

You used to know that we used to be inside sometimes hungry?

Y’all could have fixed something to eat, but y’all didn’t want to.

No! Without groceries.

Oh, well, yeah.

Mack is now clean and sober, after attending many treatment programs over the years. But while she was succumbing to her addiction, her children relied upon their grandmother to provide them with food and security. Her grandmother has lived in the Ninth Ward since she was 15 years old. Her relationship with her grandchildren is marked by her willingness to welcome them at every turn, something that was critical to their sanity and safety. “There were many times I would be sad waiting for my mother to come rescue me,” writes Jackson, “but any time I really thought about it, I already was rescued. If it weren’t for me staying with my grandma I don’t know where I’d be.”

In addition to her family, including her aunt, Jackson also talked so several other women in the neighborhood, all of whom have made impressive contributions to the community. These included Janalyn Moore Johnson, who has invented a game called Kangaroo Court to teach children how to deal with conflict; Ms. Cecile Payne, who took over the Palm Tavern, known as Walter’s, after the deaths of her father and sister; and Evella “Ms. Coochie” Pierre, who provided key support to the formation of the Nine Times Social & Pleasure Club, one of the first official second line clubs to come out of the Ninth Ward. All of these women have endured in the face of illness, single parenthood and grave personal loss. They have endured, and they have done all they could to make the lives of those around them thrive.

In the end, with What Would the World Be Without Women, Waukesha Jackson has crafted a very personal and moving look at her family and neighborhood. Although it makes for very interesting reading, in a lot of ways this book is not for the reader at all; it’s most important purpose was in the writing. Jackson started out thinking the book was “going to be easy and fast, like a class assignment.” Ultimately it became much more though, and Waukesha “learned how to deal with the loneliness that I feel about not having my mom, and I can begin to go on with my life.”

The world has not always been an easy place for Waukesha and her brothers; I hope wherever they are today, they are safe and happy.