I revisited this book for class, and while the language and visceral imagery remained the same this time as it did on my first read, I was struck this time by just how much the theme of education ran through this story. For a general recapping of the story, here’s the amazon blurb: “Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its protagonists, the fiery and unforgettable Lila, and the […]
The Outsiders
Capital ‘L’ literature puzzles me as I often feel that it’s a giant waste of time while I’m in the middle, but then I get to the end and reflect on it, and I realize that having read the book was worthwhile. This sentiment couldn’t be more true than my feeling on finishing “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” On a surface perspective, I read 350 pages in which nothing really happened and the characters went nowhere. But on a deeper inspection, the pages roil with […]
The Poor Have Always Been With Us
HALF CANNONBALL! I picked this audio book off the shelf at a library wine tasting because of it’s catchy Title. I mean, how can you see the glaring title, “White Trash,” and not be intrigued? And I haven’t listened to an audio book in a while, so it seemed like a good idea. And it was, mostly. White Trash chronologically unpacks the history of white poverty in America from the 1600s to 2012. Isenberg begins with the English penal colonies where the British government literally rounded […]
“No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.”
In April of 2017 Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction. I am relieved to discover that, because the idea that there was a better, more eloquent, well researched, and presented book released in the competition period I would have eaten my hat. Or your hat, I have trouble finding one that fits me. Desmond is a Harvard sociologist and a MacArthur “Genius” grant winner, which is shorthand for this dude is awesome (he’s in […]
The Cycle of Poverty
Thanks to bonnie’s review for turning me on to this book. This was a brutal, heartbreaking, depressing and necessary read. Desmond is a sociologist who spent several years living in Milwaukee’s depressed and impoverished areas, befriending and interviewing the residents of trailer parks, flop houses, and slums. He tells their stories in intertwining chapters that would read like fiction if you didn’t already know that these people are all incredibly real. Because often fact is stranger than fiction, or in this case, revealing, Desmond’s […]
Lamar said the sink was broken. Sherrena said he broke the sink.
I don’t read enough non-fiction, but this came so highly recommended by the world at large that I didn’t hesitate to pick it up, and man, oh man am I equal parts happy to have read it, and completely ruined by it. Matthew Desmond embedded himself in the slums (if you will) of Milwaukee for a long time, built relationships with a number of people on various sides of the complex polyhedron that is the American landlord/tenant dynamic, and in this book, reports on them […]