The Hooker's Daughter

Some people have difficult upbringings, so difficult that once they escape and march forward into better lives they don’t look back for a long time, if ever.

In Dale Stanten’s case, she waited over 40 years. She had moved to Swampscott, raised her family, got an RN degree, worked as a psychiatric nurse, and then started and ran her own successful travel business.

The decision to share her story didn’t come all at once.

“As I matured [my childhood] was not something I ever wanted to write about,” she says. Then she realized that she “wanted to tell my children,” who were in their 20’s at the time and had no inkling of their mother’s history.

So, about 12 years ago, she joined the Creative Writing Class at the . At that time the class was taught by poet Babo Kamel and met in the back room of Panera Bread in Vinnin Square.

Stanten says of that time, “After 2 or 3 months of doing the assignments, I asked if I could write my story, they said of course, we want to hear it. Before that I had done a page here and there.” The members of the class were “very receptive and I learned to trust them. It was a wonderful experience … so encouraging.”

What emerged over the next year or so was a rough draft of a very rough childhood.

Stanten grew up what she calls the “Jewish Ghetto” of Mattapan in the 1950s. When money became tight her mother became a prostitute, bringing clients into her home.

Dale and her older sister were sent to the neighbor’s, or they remained in the apartment, fully aware at a very young age what was going on in the next room. In addition, other kinds of criminal activity circled the household, some of it orchestrated by her mother.

Stanten wasn’t looking to make her mother into a villain. The truth was more complicated. Stanten says, “I felt loved by her. She thought we were wonderful and encouraged us to do whatever we wanted.” Stanten wanted to come to terms with her upbringing. She adds that as a child, “When you lead that kind of life you’re not even sure what normal is.”

The experience continues to inform her. “I feel I’m more sensitive to society’s ills because I’ve been rejected by society.” She says that other parents wouldn’t let their children play with her, and recounts being kicked out of the Girl Scouts when they found out about her mother. In later years, a boyfriend’s parents threatened to take him out of school and bribed him with a car in order to get him to break up with her.

The manuscript was “in and out of drawers” for years, but she finally “got the courage” to publish from her husband, who also designed the cover. He said it was “too big a story” to sit on.

Stanten lives half the year in Phoenix and she brought the memoir out there first because it was easier; fewer people knew her. The reception “was amazing.” Stanten received letters telling from people telling their own stories and praising her courage.

It was more emotionally difficult for Stanten to bring out her story in Swampscott because she knows so many people. She says that part of her wanted the world to know she’s become a successful person. The response here, though, has been equally as positive.

She went to her 50th high school reunion and people said, “We always liked you but we weren’t allowed to hang out with you.”

She says it hasn’t always felt easy, but part of the reason she went forward is that she hopes that “if other people can see what I’ve accomplished, other people can do it” as well.

Rita Ringer, who was one of the original members of the Senior Center Writing Group, adds that there are “so many women who have been inhibited by their parents’ lives.” She says of the experience of helping Stanten with her story, “it was marvelous. We really love her.”

For more information on the book please visit: www.thehookersdaughter.com