poverty

Book 22 for 2026: “A Guardian and a Thief”, Megha Majumdar

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In the not too distant future the city of Kolkata in India is besieged with floods and famine. Ma, her elderly father, and two year old daughter are preparing to emigrate to the US where her husband has a good professional job. This is one of the families in the story. The other is a poor family from the Sundarban struggling to stay alive while the oldest son, Boomba, has gone to Kolkata to try to earn enough to save his family.

In the two weeks time of this novel, Boomba, driven to desperation and holding a secret about Ma, breaks into Ma’s house and steals her purse which contains the passports for her, her father, and her child. Both her actions previous to his, her current actions, and Boomba’s lead both down paths they could never have previously dreamed with dire consequences for all.

Due to the flooding and famine, everyone in the city is desperate except for the one billionaire who has stayed. Their desperation leads some to behave in undesirable ways, but the main “lesson” of this novel illustrates how just one action by one person can lead to dire consequences for two entire families and possibly others as well–actions have consequences you can never begin to imagine. Be careful.

Book 21 for 2026: “Hurricane Season”, Fernanda Melchor

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The inside of the front cover informs the potential reader that this is a novel about a world steeped in mythology and violence, set in a small town in rural southeastern Mexico. The violence part is extreme, the kind of violence that only sometimes pervades a lot of small, rural, poverty ridden towns everywhere in the world. Written in a style reminiscent of Faulkner (I read a translation from the Spanish), each chapter tells the main story from a different perspective, the story leading up to and the death of the Witch who is found floating in the water of a canal. She is called the Witch but no one for sure seems to know her gender, where she attained the money to build such a huge house, and how she manages to entertain with lavish abandon. People both avoid her and are drawn to her.

There is the grandmother who thinks her wayward grandson can do no wrong while blaming her daughter ( the child’s mother) for everything and anything, there is his friend whom he both loves and hates, their is the poor girl he aids and loves who has been groomed and impregnated by her stepfather and has run away because of it, the engineer who loves boys and men, the woman who makes her living as a fancy prostitute to support her disabled husband and on and on it goes–people harming each other out of anger and frustration with their dire circumstances. For some of the characters, the writing is first person so the reader learns the interworkings of those mentally harmed by their life’s poverty and environment from which there appears to be no escape.

This is not a novel for the faint of heart.

In Defense of Young People

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Recently, at a party I attended, someone claimed young people these days are lazy, don’t want to work, feel entitled. Sometimes I can keep my mouth shut, just listen, and disagree inside. Not this time. When I hear comments like this about young people, comments with which I vehemently disagree whether it is in person or on social media, I feel compelled to speak up.

During at least half the year, I spend one day a week at an inner city high school. Granted the students I work with are high achieving, students who are the opposite of lazy, some almost to the extreme. When I mentioned this, the person said, “Well this is because they are recent immigrants.” In most of these cases at this school, that is true. Then I explained that I had taught more than 20 years at two Title I high schools where nearly no one was a recent immigrant. Of course, like throughout history, there are some lazy young people. That, however, does not describe the majority. I’ve had homeless students who took the hardest dual credit classes and prevailed. I’ve had students who spent extra time at school because it was safer than being home. I’ve had students whose parents were in jail or drug addicts but still made it to school, did the required work, and graduated. I’ve had students struggling with mental health issues but no matter what managed to do the work required.

Reasons to be lazy abound. Reasons to feel hopeless about the future abound. Look at the present economy, look at the wage cap between the rich and poor, look at how many struggle to find a decent job. Young people are aware of all this, acutely aware. Yet most do the work required and press on no matter what.

I applaud them!

Book 29 for 2025: “Hang the Moon”, Jeannette Walls

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I had only read her memoir, “The Glass Castle”, previously and remember thinking, wow, even some intelligent, educated people can have very different ideas about how to live. I was looking for a book to read and found this novel, her most recent book published in 2023, at the local library.

The main character, Sallie Kincaid, is the daughter of the wealthiest man in a small town, well even the county, and he runs everyone and everything there. Sallie remembers little of her mother and knows little about what happened to her except she died after a violent argument with her father. He remarries and has a son. Sallie tries to teach him to be bold like she and her father are. This results in a horrible accident and her stepmother demands she leave. Her dad sends her to live with the poor sister of her mother where she remains until she is seventeen. Her dad sends an old friend from her childhood to bring her back to his place, the biggest, grandest house in the county.

It is Prohibition and ways of making a living that have always existed in this area of the mountain Southeast is now illegal. Slavery is over and women can vote but for most life has changed very little. Her stepmom dies, unforeseen tragedies occur, people are not who she thinks they are, and one awful thing after another ensues. This is one of those novels you keep reading because you want to know what happens. It is the story of Sallie Kincaid, a very strong, determined woman who survives and even thrives no matter what.

Book 28 for 2025: “The Barbarian Nurseries”, Héctor Tobar

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Although the copyright says 2011, this book in so many ways continues to describe the different groups of people and cultures that live in Southern California. Even though I know that to which the title refers, I am not sure it really does the book justice. This is the story of a wealthy, young family living in one of the most expensive suburbs in Orange County. The husband, Scott, who is half Mexican, made it as a tech savvy guy. His wife, a transplant from Maine, does not work but stays home with two young boys who go to a fancy private school where she volunteers. They have a baby girl. Taking care of all this is apparently too much for her so they have a live-in maid, Araceli, who has her own little bedroom separate from the big house. Until recently, they had two other people working for them, one young woman who helped with the children and a gardener. Due to money issues, when the book begins, only Araceli is left working for them.

Financial pressures lead to the couple fighting. One morning Araceli awakens to an almost empty house; only the two boys remain. Everyone else has disappeared. She cannot reach the parents; no one is answering the phone. This continues for two days until they are about to run out of food. She has never had to interact with the children much before and is a bit at loss as to what to do. Neither she nor they have a clue as to where the parents are each of whom think the other one is at home. Araceli finds an old photo of Scott’s dad, Señor Torres, with an old address written on the back. She decides to have the boys pack some clothes in their backpacks and they head off to find their grandfather.

Their misadventures and the mistaken accusations that follow show just how crazy things can get when people totally misunderstand what has occurred, people cannot think correctly due to their prejudices, and the wrong people get involved. Since I live in Southern California and have been to some of the places described or places similar, this book rang so true for me and made me laugh out loud and keep on reading.

Book One of 2025: “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store”, James McBride

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This is another great novel by one of my favorite authors. The book begins with the finding of a skeleton in a well in 1972. Since it is located near the site of an old synagogue, the police start to question a local, elderly Jewish man, Malachi, but get nowhere. Before they can come back to ask him more questions, Hurricane Agnes washes away the skeleton and many houses in the lower, wealthier part of town. When they do finally get around to hunting for him again, he has disappeared.

Then the novel goes back 47 years in this nondescript Pennsylvania town where the white people live in the lower, nicer part of town, and the Jews and black people live in or near an area called Chicken Hill, a poor area with little water and no plumbing. It is the story of a Jewish couple, Chona and Moshe. She runs the grocery store in the title, and he runs a dance theatre where he hosts dances, sometimes showcasing very famous musicians, mostly Jewish or black or Latino. It is also the story of some of their black neighbors, one of whom was Chona’s best friend in school, Jewish immigrants from Europe like Malachi, and a deaf black child, Dodo. When the state comes for Dodo because his mother has died and they think he should be institutionalized, Chona’s kindness and the courage of a local black worker, Nate Timblin, bring the black and Jewish people together to save him. While all this can be sad and serious, I also found myself frequently laughing. This novel reveals the quirks of all sorts of people, how they relate to one another, the dangers of racism, and ultimately the meaning of community, courage, and friendship and how much these things matter.

Book 18 for 2024: “Quiet Street”, Nick McDonell

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Want to know how the top 1 percent, the super wealthy live and control nearly everything in the US? Read this book. In a mere 117 pages, McDonell explains his own life and that of fellow 1 percenters. He details his early life, the private school he attended, the family connections, summers taking sailing lessons in the Hamptons, and vacations using private jets to places like the Galapagos Islands. At 18, he was able to get his first novel published in part because of his family connections to a famous publisher. Eventually, he left this life behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this book he details how the super wealthy hoard wealth, pass it from one generation to another, and how outsiders, the poor and those not white, are kept out. Here are a few quotes from the book:

“I began to see how, in the United States of America and elsewhere, success almost always, and predominantly, depends upon wealth–and frequently comes at the expense of the less wealthy.”

“We in the one percent like to believe in meritocracy, even fairness.” At this point he lists several of famous people who rose to wealth and power from poorer circumstance and explains how this is used to make the “one percenters feel good, they distract from the possibility of a more humane distribution of wealth.”

Why do the one percenters behave as they often do? He interviews several whom he knows through his private school connections. “The fear they share was loss of wealth. Without ever saying so, they were very much afraid of losing their country houses, the barn converted for their kids sleepovers, the space for the grand piano, the green houses, pied-a-terre where their mother-in-law stayed without interfering in everyone’s business, the airport lounge that allowed them to enjoy pleasures among their own, in quiet. They were afraid of supermarket processed cheese, preferred organic stuff which they believed would keep them alive longer….they were afraid of losing their Prada bags…the cashmere….They feared losing wealth not for its own sake but because it was justified, in their own minds, by intelligence, hard work, determination—that is by character.” They truly seem to believe they are smarter and harder working than other people.

One Book a Week-49: “Anything Is Possible”, Elizabeth Strout

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Her books are deceptively simple with so much to say about people and life. This is the fourth book I have read of hers this year. It interweaves many of the characters in the books I previously read back to the towns where they were born and grew up. One part of the book discusses one family who were so poor the children dug food out of dumpsters and everyone made fun of them at school. Only one truly escapes and finds success. One lives a lonely life at the home place, and the other is filled with anger and resentment. Much of the book is about how even if persons escape a horribly poor and dysfunctional family and find success later in life, the terrible things that happen to them as children are always there lurking in the shadows. This includes a lot of resentment and anger from some family members who do not manage to escape. Other parts of the book detail the lengths to which people will go to find solace often secretly with few or no one having a clue about how their lives really are. How well can we really know another person?

One Book a Week-45: “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison

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“The Bluest Eye” is one of the most banned books in the US. Even here in California, some in my local school district tried to get it removed from the high school library. One school board member told me it had been on the shelves since it was first published and no one cared until this year. Why the controversy about this book?

Yes, there is incest and sexual assault, but this occurs near the end. My guess is that what really disturbs some is the stark details and honesty about how people treat each other, the brutality of racism and poverty, and even among people of the same race, the cruelty of discrimination based on how people look, their level of education, their origins. The main character is poor, unattractive, and unpopular. She comes to believe that if she just had blue eyes, all her problems would disappear. She even goes to a charlatan preacher whom she believes can make her eyes blue because others have told her he creates miracles.

The relentless truths detailed in this novel create a hard look at the effects of poverty and racism.