[Alissa Quart’s New Book Debunks ‘Self-made’ Myth ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

NOBODY DOES IT ON THEIR OWN  
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Renee Feltz
May 9, 2023
The Indypendent
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_ Alissa Quart’s New Book Debunks ‘Self-made’ Myth _

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_Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream_
Alissa Quart
Ecco
ISBN-13: 978-0063028005

In _Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream_,
Alissa Quart, head of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, lays
bare the myth of self-sufficiency in a way that really does feel
liberating. Rich with wit, her storytelling mixes historic and
contemporary references and carries on her former friend and colleague
Barbara Ehrenreich’s searing analysis of ways the rich exploit the
poor.

Her first chapter opens with a quote from the former-slave-turned
abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass and his popular “Self-Made
Men” address.

“There are in the world no such men as self-made men. The term
implies an individual independence of the past and present which can
never exist.”

And yet, he is often misquoted ­— by those who cite Ayn Rand and
Horatio Alger — to promote the idea that we should attribute our
ability to “climb the ladder” to skill and dedication, without
acknowledging the role of generational wealth and where it comes from.
Quart sets the record straight and notes along the way that Alger was
an alleged pedophile and that Ayn Rand relied on Social ­Security in
her later years. 

Quart also describes how, when it was first used, the notion of
bootstrapping ourselves to success was mocked: “When the concept of
pulling yourself up by the bootstraps was first advanced in 1834 it
was understood as surreal, intended to be seen as an outlandish act
— how could anyone pull up their boots to lift their own bodies?”
But by the time of President Reagan, she notes that “to be a
self-made success meant  you were morally good, and if you had failed
to succeed, you were morally corrupt.”

The burden of the American Dream can now be found in the common
experiences of Americans and the “dystopian safety net” we have
come to rely on, such as creating a GoFundMe to cover our healthcare
costs or working for gig companies that exploit “the allure of
individualism” and define their workers as “independent
contractors.” In one chapter, “The Con of the Side Hustle,”
Quart writes about Vanessa Bain, who was a personal shopper before the
pandemic, but came to feel she was not being treated fairly once it
started ­— the money and flexible hours did not make up for the
lack of healthcare while being exposed to a deadly virus as an
“essential worker.”

In the final part of her book, Quart looks at how to preserve the
social safety net, and keep the parts that were expanded during the
pandemic, and how mutual aid is actually also linked to the naturalist
Charles Darwin. Her chapter on “Inequality Therapy” examines how
“the cult of individualism has led generations to lacerate
themselves.” She describes how some have called for reducing
reliance on terms like “resilience” or “grit” and embracing a
trauma-informed approach. 

It would be great if lawmakers and policymakers would embrace the
concept of interdependence in their language and in the laws they
pass. In the meantime, a more informed public can refuse to go along
with the sham.

“In order to get to this more radiantly centered place, though, we
each need to work to snuff out the self-made myth within ourselves and
to stop flagellating ourselves when we don’t achieve autonomous
glory,” Quart writes.  “Needing each other is our strength, not
our weakness. Singular triumphs never existed in the first place.”

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* The Self-Made Myth
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* Capitalist ideology
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* The Social Safety Net
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