Disposable
America's Contempt for the Underclass
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In this “barn burner of a book” (The New York Times Book Review) New York magazine senior writer Sarah Jones blends personal stories and in-depth reporting to expose the harsh reality of America’s culture of inequality and the devastating impact of the pandemic on our nation’s most vulnerable people.
In the tradition of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Andrea Elliot’s Invisible Child, Disposable is a poignant exploration of America’s underclass, left vulnerable by systemic racism and capitalism. Here, Sarah Jones delves into the lives of the essential workers, seniors, and people with disabilities who were disproportionately affected by COVID-19—not due to their age or profession, but because of the systemic inequality and poverty that left them exposed.
The pandemic served as a stark revelation of the true state of America, a country where the dream of prosperity is a distant mirage for millions. Jones argues that the pandemic didn’t create these dynamics but rather revealed the existing social mobility issues and wealth gap that have long plagued the nation. Behind the staggering death toll are stories of lives lost, injustices suffered, and institutions that failed to protect their people.
Jones brings these stories to the forefront, transforming the abstract concept of the pandemic into a deeply personal and political phenomenon. Her book “stands as a reminder of the lessons our country has willfully ignored—an especially stark one with Donald Trump back in the White House and further shredding the social safety net” (The Washington Post).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones, a senior writer at New York magazine, debuts with a disquieting examination of the systemic flaws laid bare by Covid. "What the pandemic did... is strip the world back until its workings are visible to all," she contends. Drawing on personal accounts from Covid victims and their families, Jones profiles people with disabilities who died alone in overfilled care facilities, frontline workers who couldn't afford to quit, a prisoner who worked on a hazmat team with no protective gear, and a Haitian immigrant with a precarious housing situation that made care more difficult to access—after she died of Covid, her son remarked that her doctors had been "ready to rush her into the grave." His statement is only half hyperbole—Jones's vision of America isn't one where the poor stumbled into Covid-era tragedy by happenstance but one in which it was intentionally engineered, and she interweaves her account with a mind-boggling assortment of anecdotes and insights that showcase systemic harm and humiliation. They range from an observation that medical programs that forcibly sterilized the poor under the auspices of eugenics in the early 20th century now aggressively collect unpaid medical bills as a similar deterrent to accessing care, to a story about workers at an Oakland McDonald's who finally walked off the job when they were given dog diapers to use as masks during the Covid lockdown. It's a ghastly panorama of the American way of life.
