New Book - "The Hooker's Daughter"

September 8, 2011

Cyrus Moulton reports, 6 Sept 2011:

http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2011/09/06/news/news03.txt

SWAMPSCOTT [Massachusetts] - A retired local businesswoman has written a brutally candid memoir that recalls a mother who was loving, inspirational and also a prostitute.

"I got many of her characteristics and traits and she set some wonderful examples," said Dale Stanten, 68, author of "The Hooker's Daughter," which she published herself in March. "But I always knew the problems with her boundaries were not very good ... we suffered, but we also soared."

The novel relates Stanten's struggle to overcome the ostracism that she experienced as her mother May Winik's notoriety as a prostitute followed her from the "Jewish Ghetto" of Mattapan in the 1950s and 1960s through her adult life in Swampscott.

It is a complicated story - in Stanten's retelling her mother fit neither the cliches of a 'hooker with a heart of gold,' nor is the story a salacious tell-all.

Rather it is a story that took Stanten her entire life to be able to tell.

"I had to do a lot of soul-searching to be able to write this," Stanten said, sitting in her oceanfront condominium's study that is filled with pictures of grandchildren, children and her mother. "I wanted to leave it for my children, I felt that I had a story to tell them - not a "Mommie Dearest," (referring to Christina Crawford's best-selling memoir of her abusive and traumatic childhood after she was adopted by actress Joan Crawford) - not about condemnation, but survival. I worked through it."

It was a long struggle, however.

Stanten recalls first learning of her mother's prostitution at age five or six when she would be sent to kindergarten with her older sister in order for her mother to bring Johns to the home. Stanten said that the reaction of the school teachers when they sent her home - combined with other children's refusal to come into the house or telling her that they couldn't be friends with her because of her mother - let Stanten know that her mother's prostitution was an open secret in Mattapan.

But Winik refused to be a victim. Stanten's father worked irregularly, probably suffering from depression, Stanten said, so her mother became the home's leader and sole breadwinner. Winik kept the family out of poverty and rejected the community's attempts to shame her. She also never had anything but praise for her children and took them along on trips with wealthy boyfriends. In the face of whispers and rumors, Winik taught Stanten and her sister to be strong and confident.

"My mother was very open and honest with us," Stanten recalled with pride. "Sometimes I felt very wordly and I had a posturing that was not childlike at all." But Stanten also acknowledged that this openness went too far, especially when she was a child. "But we knew far too much."

And she knew that her childhood was very different than most. So she said she aspired to what she felt was normal - throwing herself into being a wife when she married at age 22 and moved to Swampscott.

"All I wanted to be was normal, be married, have kids - vacuum," Stanten recalled. "You know that jello was really big in the Sixties? As a young wife I considered myself Queen of the Jello Molds."

But Stanten said that fate made her feel ostracized once again. Her husband became ill and - six years later - died of cancer, leaving her at age 30 with two young children. She said that "nobody wanted to hang around with death," and her mother's stigma remained, making her feel even more isolated and alone.

So over the course of the illness, she threw herself into being a provider. She became a nurse, then started a business that planned and managed activities for conventions that would come to Boston.

But while May Winik was very open with her daughters about her prostitution, Stanten wanted to shield her two children from their grandmother's life.

"I didn't tell until my kids were into their early twenties," she said. "The whole goal was just to protect my children ... I didn't want them to feel more alone after they lost their father."

Plus, Stanten's children loved their grandmother, who was a constant presence in their lives.

It took approximately 10 years after her mother's death before Stanten began to seriously consider writing her story. Stanten said she never planned on publishing a memoir. But she knew she had a story to tell her children and grandchildren, so she signed up for a senior writing group that met at Panera Bread in Vinnin Square.

For the first time, her mother's prostitution brought Stanten support rather than ostracism.

"There was real compassion around that table," said the group's facilitator Babo Kamel, who teaches writing at North Shore Community College. "It was a story that we all wanted her to tell... and I'm so happy for Dale that she gained the courage to do it."

And while she was nervous about publishing the story in Swampscott, the feedback she has received has encouraged her to keep telling her story.

It has also brought her a sense of validation - both that she did suffer and that she has overcome her trials.

She brought out a stack of letters and emails that she has received since the book was published to share ... "just one more," she would say.

"No more secrets," she said. "I can't believe things that people have said to me, I'm showing people resilience and strength and that you too can do it, and it's already come back to me in so many ways."

To purchase a copy of Stanten's memoir, "The Hooker's Daughter,"and see a schedule of upcoming readings, visit

http://www.TheHookersDaughter.com