Elevate Difference

Reviews by Stephanie Sylverne

Stephanie Sylverne

Stephanie Sylverne has three daughters, two college degrees, and one husband. She is currently on hiatus from teaching high school and spends her time wrapped up in mundane household matters or buying books she hopes to find the time to read. Her interests include feminist anthropology, welfare rights, supporting young parents, arguing politics, drinking vanilla rooibus tea and idolizing a wide variety of rebels and mischief makers. Her writing has been included in a couple of parenting anthologies and recently as a guest blogger at MomHouston.com.

Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant

On the surface, Susan Supernaw’s memoir Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant is a story about an unlikely Miss Oklahoma winner and her trip to the 1971 Miss America pageant. The true story, however, is Supernaw’s struggle to escape a childhood marred by extreme poverty and violence and earn the Native American name revealed to her during a near death experience.

Living on the Edge in Suburbia: From Welfare to Workfare

Living on the Edge in Suburbia is Terese Lawinski’s comprehensive examination of welfare in the United States using ethnographic research on suburban families in Westchester County, New York. Lawinski leaves no stone in the welfare debate unturned, from the infamous myth of the “Welfare Queen” (introduced to America’s vocabulary by a Reagan campaign speech in 1976) to the fallacy of “illegal immigrants” coming to the U.S. in droves looking for easy money.

My Tehran for Sale

Granaz Moussavi’s documentary-style film (winner of an Independent Spirit Award in 2009) is an understated peek inside the contradictory nature of everyday life in Iran. My Tehran for Sale opens with a scene that would probably be familiar to many Westerners: young adults at a rave. Things suddenly take a turn when Iranian moral police raid the barn where the party is being held to arrest and assault party-goers.