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 […]
A depressing but necessary book about rent evictions
Because I’ve been reading about All The Cheerful Things apparently, I decided to pile on and read the Pulitzer-Prize winning Evicted about landlords and tenants in Milwaukee. I’ve tried to remain fairly secretive about my origins, but I do think it important to note that I lived 17 years of my life in Wisconsin, 12 of those specifically in the Milwaukee suburbs. I did my PhD in Milwaukee, as well, though I commuted out-of-state for that, and Marquette, my school, was right at the center […]
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 […]