Dear Self: A Year in the Life of a Welfare Mother (NID Publishers, 978-0-9792281-0-0) is the 1973 journal of a Scorpio, a bowler, an avid reader, closet epileptic, public-minded letter writer, skeptic of relationships, and welfare recipient in New Britain, Connecticut. It’s intensely personal but concerns big issues: race relations, kindness and cruelty, poverty, dependence, gender wars, and liberation versus tradition. The self-portrait rings honest, with doubts and inward criticism, classic 1970s cultural references and ideas drawn from progressive writers.

Bright and thoughtful, a middle-aged mother of declining constitution, Richelene Mitchell fell out of the middle class when a marriage went bad. Increasingly exhausted from semi-volunteer work at a failing dry-cleaner’s business, the ticking bomb of dramatic irony lies in the background—the hope for a better future in the face of likely destruction is heartbreaking. Mitchell was more than the sum of her statuses. She faced uncertainty with grace, dignity, and a daily page of insight. Through adversity, she sent up flares so her Self could find the way back.