Previous research has determined that American women living in poverty depend upon resources such as kinship networks, employment, and agency assistance in order to get by. However, researchers have not given much attention to the actual skills that enable poor women to access these resources. This paper is a life story-centered ethnography of a woman named “Millie,” a middle-aged, Puerto Rican, dark complexioned, former heroin user who has become an experienced poverty survivor living in a southern U.S. city. By accompanying Millie and talking with her regularly over a ten-year period, the first author, Jennifer Friedman, observed her using four categories of skills (conservation, observation, network-building, and performance), sometimes in illegal ways, to obtain resources. Millie's stories about her life enhance our understanding of these skills while also casting doubt on popular cultural stereotypes about “non-working” poor women.
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