Hand to mouth : the truth about being poor in a wealthy world
Linda Tirado knows from experience what it is to be poor, to struggle to make ends meet. She has worked all hours as a food service worker in a chain restaurant to support her young family. She knows what it's like to have problems you wish you could fix, but no money, energy or resources to fix them, and no hope of getting any. In 2013, an essay on the everyday realities of poverty that Tirado wrote and posted online was read and shared around the world. In Hand to Mouth, she gives a searing, witty and clear-eyed insider account of being poor in the world's richest nation. She looks at how ordinary people fall or are born into the poverty trap, explains why the poor don't always behave in the way the middle classes think they should, and makes an urgent call for us all to understand and meet the challenges they face
Staff pick
xxiv, 195 pages ; 24 cm
9780349005485, 0349005486
891980405
Foreword / by Barbara Ehrenreich
It takes money to make money
You get what you pay for
You can't pay a doctor in chickens anymore
I'm not angry so much as I'm really tired
I've got way bigger problems than a spinach salad can solve
This part is about sex
We do not have babies for welfare money
Poverty is fucking expensive
Being poor isn't a crime
it just feels like it
An open letter to rich people