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Books about what it's like to be poor were all the rage 10 years ago after the success of Barbara Ehrenreich's *Nickel and Dimed* <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/aug/31/highereducation.shopping>. That was an excellent book, albeit one that, like its imitators, was written from the vantage point of the safari Jeep: middle-class journalists taking minimum wage jobs and then writing about them when they got safely home. These books, while useful, missed a large part of what it is to be poor: not just the logistical nightmare of juggling bad jobs, bad credit and bad housing, but what it feels like, for the entirety of your life, to be despised by the culture you live in. The existential threat to one's self-esteem can only be got at by those who have lived for decades with no safety net and who, as Tirado points out, not only act but look poor. It changes the way people treat you. The shocking thing about *Hand to Mouth*, which is part memoir, part polemic and part howl of protest, is that, in some ways, Tirado is lucky. She was not born into poverty. (She skirts over her background, hinting at some family problems that meant her parents, for a long stretch of her 20s, wouldn't help her out after she dropped out of college. And she wrestled with ill health and depression.) She is articulate and can argue her way out of things. And she has, more often than not, been employed, albeit in one or more fast-food jobs with no benefits or security. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/hand-to-mouth-review-linda-tirado-poor-poverty _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
