Boy and Girl Tramps of America

Thomas Minehan (1903-1948) was instructor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. As a graduate student, he lived among and studied transient teens during the height of the Great Depression. His research was published as Boy and Girl Tramps of America in 1934. Susan Honeyman is professor of English at the University of Nebraska. She is author of Elusive Childhood: Impossible Representations in Modern Fiction; Consuming Agency in Fairy Tales, Childlore, and Folkliterature; Child Pain, Migraine, and Invisible Disability; and Perils of Protection: Shipwrecks, Orphans, and Children's Rights, the latter published by University Press of Mississippi.

Today, Minehan's research methods have been widely adopted, and, fortunately, Editor Susan Honeyman has revived his remarkable study. . . . What this book should have meant in 1934 can, perhaps, be understood now.--Theodore Bain "Journal of American Culture" Minehan has included in his book case histories of over 500 young people as well as numerous anecdotes of the road and diaries of two travelers. Subject matter ranges from the discussion of the lives of the boys and girls before they left home to their religion, life, and morality after they had been on the road.-- "The Minnesota Alumni Weekly" This welcome new edition of Boy and Girl Tramps includes Susan Honeyman's insightful introduction, which places Minehan's work in the context of contemporary racial, class, and gender concerns--James Wunsch "The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth" Boy and Girl Tramps of America is an important book for the history of youth, and it is especially relevant in this difficult time when young people worldwide are affected by upheaval and poverty.--Ilana Nash, author of American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture