Horizon Information Portal

HSPLS site

eBooks/Audiobooks

Reading Program

Going for broke : living on the edge in the world's richest country / edited by Alissa Quart and David Wallis.

View full image

Chicago, Illinois : Haymarket Books, 2023.

Poor -- United States.

Poor -- United States -- Personal narratives.

Working poor -- United States.

Working poor -- United States -- Personal narratives.

Working class -- United States.

Working class -- United States -- Personal narratives.

Poverty -- United States.

Poor -- Government policy -- United States -- 21st century.

United States -- Social conditions -- 21st century.

United States -- Social policy -- 21st century.

United States -- Economic conditions -- 21st century.

9781642599657 (paperback) :

1642599654 (paperback)

360 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Introduction / Alissa Quart -- Section 1: The body -- Introduction / Camonghne Felix -- Love and war / Karie Fugett -- A stay at Kings County / text and photos by Charlie Gross -- I did my own abortion because Texas used COVID-19 as an excuse to shut down abortion clinics / Anonymous as told to and with an introduction by Anna Louie Sussman -- "Women afraid of dying while they are trying to find their life" / Alissa Quart, with an introduction by Katha Pollitt -- Medicaid has been good to my body, but it has abandoned my brain / Katie Prout -- My disability is my superpower - if only employers could see it that way / Andrea Dobynes Wagner as told to Deborah Jian Lee -- A trip to the nail salon with missing fingers / Kim Kelly -- Traumatic pregnancies are awful - Dobbs will make them so much worse / Alissa Quart -- The twisted business of donating plasma / Darryl Lorenzo Wellington -- To help the homeless, offer shelter that allows deep sleep / Lori Teresa Yearwood -- Inequity in maternal health care left me with undiagnosed postpartum PTSD / Courtney Lund O'Neil -- Anything of value / Lorelei Lee -- Section 2: Home -- Introduction: the organized abandonment of shelter / Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor -- Homeless in a pandemic: the housing poetry of Jennifer Fitzgerald / poems and images by Jen Fitzgerald, with an introduction by Alissa Quart -- Meet Tomeka Langford / Anne Elizabeth Moore -- Unaddressed / Bobbi Dempsey -- Evictionland / Joseph Williams -- 37,000 US veterans are homeless - I was one of them / Alex Miller -- Why I choose to live house-free in Alaska / Joe Ford -- I was wrongly detained at the border - it's part of a larger problem / David Wallis -- I watched war erupt in the Balkans - here's what I see in America today / Elizabeth Rubin -- A fierce desire to stay: looking at West Virginia through its people's eyes / Elizabeth Catte, with photographs by Matt Eich and poetry by Doug Van Gundy -- Section 3: Family -- Introduction / Michelle Tea -- Don't be this way forever / text and images by Jordan Gale -- When my father called me about his unemployment / Lisa Ventura -- I took in a homeless couple - would you? / Annabelle Gurwitch -- My marriage was broken - the coronavirus lockdown saved it / Robert Fieseler -- P.S. 42 / Celina Su, with a photo by Annie Ling -- My sister is a recovering heroin addict - I can't fix her, but she also can't fix herself / Elizabeth Kadetsky -- In the pandemic, cooking connected me to my ancestors / Elizabeth Gollan -- The underground economy of unpaid care / Julie Poole -- The worst part of being poor: watching your dog die when you can't afford to help / Bobbi Dempsey -- Nomen est omen / Mitchell S. Jackson -- Section 4: Work -- Introduction: to make work visible, again and again / Kathi Weeks -- How the taxi workers won / text and images by Molly Crabapple -- My pandemic year behind the checkout counter: on working amid paranoid customers, hungry shoplifters, sick coworkers, and people who just need a bathroom / Ann Larson -- From academic to assembly-line worker: my life of precarity in Middle America / Gloria Diaz -- Once upon a time, waitress was a union job - could history repeat itself? / Haley Hamilton -- Why I check the "Black" box: I learned racial ambiguity was not something I could afford / Lori Teresa Yearwood -- My life as a retail worker: nasty, brutish, and poor / Joseph Williams -- What it's like riding along with a valet driver at a San Francisco strip club / text and photos by Rian Dundon -- You talk real good / Alison Stine -- The secret lives of adjunct professors / Gila K. Berryman -- The poetry of labor: on Rodrigo Toscano and the art of work / Rodrigo Toscano, with an introduction by Alissa Quart and a photograph by David Bacon -- Zen and the art of Uber driving / John Koopman -- Section 5: Class -- Introduction / Astra Taylor -- The difference between being broke and being poor / Erynn Brook, with illustrations by Emily Flake -- That sinking feeling / Ray Suarez -- Off our butts: how smoking bans extinguish solidarity / June Thunderstorm -- Never-ending sentences / Philip Metres -- The dignity of the thrift store / Elizabeth Gollan -- Class dismissed / Alison Stine -- For years, I've tried to work my way back into the middle class / Lori Teresa Yearwood -- What does it mean to be "bad with money"? / Joshua Hunt.

"A collection of compelling, hard-hitting first-person essays, poems, and photos that expose what our punitive social systems do to so many Americans. Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, former Managing Director of EHRP, gives voice to a range of gifted writers for whom "economic precarity" is more than just another assignment. All illustrate what the late Barbara Ehrenreich, who conceived of EHRP, once described as "the real face of journalism today: not million dollar-a-year anchorpersons, but low-wage workers and downwardly spiraling professionals." One essayist and grocery store worker describes what it is like to be an "essential worker" during the pandemic; another reporter and military veteran details his experience with homelessness and what would have actually helped him at the time. These dozens of fierce and sometimes darkly funny pieces reflect the larger systems that have made writers' bodily experiences, family and home lives, and work far harder than they ought to be. Featuring introductions by luminaries including Michelle Tea, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Astra Taylor, Going for Broke is revelatory. It shows us the costs of income inequality to our bodies and our minds--and demonstrates real ways to change our conditions."--Publisher's website.

Horizon Information Portal 3.25_9884

Powered by Dynix

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal