Hand to Mouth
The Truth About Being Poor in a Wealthy World
-
- €3.99
-
- €3.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gripping memoir, Tirado, author of the online essay "Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts," stands before us, her bad habits (swearing, smoking) and bad decisions fully on display, to say that even with the best-laid plans, poverty can happen to anyone. When red tape and a summer storm left her and her husband without a home and with nearly nothing to their names, the couple slid into the demoralizing treadmill that is poverty in America. With critical insight and palpable fury, Tirado tears down common assumptions and superior attitudes about the working poor, from entitlement issues to finance management, and rounds it out with some hard truths about the lack of opportunities for mobility, from the inability to survive an unpaid internship to the full-body impact of commuting an hour or more every day on foot. Articulate, insightful, and saturated with life experience, Tirado's story is not unlike millions of others in America, but her strong voice has the opportunity to bring that story to new ears.
