{"id":52236,"date":"2018-11-29T15:34:41","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T20:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=52236"},"modified":"2025-10-17T10:43:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:43:02","slug":"kathy-dobson-journey","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/kathy-dobson-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathy Dobson’s Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Kathy Dobson's Journey\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

When Kathy Dobson<\/a> was working toward a master\u2019s degree in Communication Studies at a university in southwestern Ontario, one of her professors said that only five people on the planet read his very specialized research papers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIf you changed a few words,\u201d she asked him, \u201cdo you think you might get 10 readers?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t laugh,\u201d reports Dobson, an instructor, journalist, author and PhD candidate at Carleton University whose research and non-academic writing revolve around media representations of poverty and her own first-hand experiences of living in poverty respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a writer,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to be read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kathy<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s important for me to be doing both academic and non-academic writing,\u201d continues Dobson, whose second non-fiction book<\/a>, Punching and Kicking: Leaving Canada\u2019s Toughest Neighbourhood<\/a><\/em>, was to launch at a Carleton event. \u201cIt\u2019s healthy to have your feet in the real world while doing academia.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cMind you, if I wasn\u2019t doing all this other stuff, I\u2019d probably have my PhD finished by now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By \u201cother stuff,\u201d she means transforming her first memoir \u2014 With a Closed Fist: Growing Up in Canada\u2019s Toughest Neighbourhood<\/a><\/em> \u2014 into a script for a producer who plans to make it into a feature film. And writing a collection of short stories. And working on a third non-fiction book, about whistleblowers, for Montreal\u2019s V\u00e9hicule Press<\/a>, which has published both of her previous releases. And teaching Media and Poverty<\/a>, a new fourth-year, special-topic Communications course at Carleton this semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young Kathy Dobson who narrates Punching and Kicking <\/em>could never have imagined herself standing in front of a room full of university students. Which illustrates one of the main themes of her research and storytelling: that media and mainstream society make assumptions about people living in poverty and other marginalized communities without a deeper understanding of the systemic problems \u2014 and people \u2014 at the heart of these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Kathy<\/figure>\n\n\n

Kathy Dobson Paints a Nuanced Picture of Life Below the Poverty Line<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Growing up with a single mother in Montreal\u2019s Point St. Charles in the 1970s, Dobson and her five sisters experience more than their share of hardship, from slum landlords and \u201cpervy uncles\u201d to the prejudices they encounter outside the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Dobson infuses Punching and Kicking <\/em>with dark humour, whether describing her tentative first steps into post-secondary education at Dawson College \u2014 \u201ca new environment where problems aren\u2019t solved by a good punch to the head\u201d \u2014 or the abortion process at a hospital, where women who can\u2019t afford to pay for the procedure at a private clinic must endure a screening panel of three men before being approved as patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book paints an intimate and nuanced picture of life below the poverty line, revealing the individuals behind the stereotypes and statistics, and challenging, as Erin MacLeod writes<\/a> in the Montreal Review of Books<\/em>, \u201cany simple narratives one might have about what it means to be poor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kathy
Kathy Dobson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dobson didn\u2019t plan to write a sequel after releasing With a Closed Fist <\/em>in 2011. But the book received tremendous feedback \u2014 the Globe and Mail called it<\/a><\/em> a \u201cwicked, incisive, brutal memoir\u201d \u2014 and readers kept asking when she was going to share more of her story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a Closed Fist<\/em> ends on an optimistic note, although far from \u201chappily ever after,\u201d and the same feeling flows through Punching and Kicking<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More Interesting Reads<\/h4>\n\n\n\n