Hillbilly Elegy - J.D. Vance

Sing, Unburied, Unsung - Jesmyn Ward

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond

Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Boo, Katherine

Summary: Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.



Kirkus Reviews
In her debut, Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker staff writer Boo creates an intimate, unforgettable portrait of India's urban poor. Mumbai's sparkling new airport and surrounding luxury hotels welcome visitors to the globalized, privatized, competitive India. Across the highway, on top of tons of garbage and next to a vast pool of sewage, lies the slum of Annawadi, one of many such places that house the millions of poor of Mumbai. For more than three years, Boo lived among and learned from the residents, observing their struggles and quarrels, listening to their dreams and despair, recording it all. She came away with a detailed portrait of individuals daring to aspire but too often denied a chance--their lives viewed as an embarrassment to the modernized wealthy. The author poignantly details these many lives: Abdul, a quiet buyer of recyclable trash who wished for nothing more than what he had; Zehrunisa, Abdul's mother, a Muslim matriarch among hostile Hindu neighbors; Asha, the ambitious slum leader who used her connections and body in a vain attempt to escape from Annawadi; Manju, her beautiful, intelligent daughter whose hopes laid in the new India of opportunity; Sunil, the master scavenger, a little boy who would not grow; Meena, who drank rat poison rather than become a teenage bride in a remote village; Kalu, the charming garbage thief who was murdered and left by the side of the road. Boo brilliantly brings to life the residents of Annawadi, allowing the reader to know them and admire the fierce intelligence that allows them to survive in a world not made for them. The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition

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A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

A tree grows in Brooklyn - Smith, Betty

Summary: Armed with her idealism and determination, young Francie Nolan struggles to escape from the poverty of life in a Brooklyn tenement during the early 1900s. Reprint. - (Baker & Taylor)

Kirkus Review
/* Starred Review */ "A first novel of unusual quality and understanding, written with strong realism and compassion, sometimes bald, always human, this rightfully ranks with the Farrell genre, though, to my thinking, there is better balance and more sympathy. The slums of Brooklyn, and the Irish Catholics, form the setting for the story of Francie Nolan and her family:- Johnny, her father, handsome and shiftless; Katie, her mother, hardening under years of poverty and improvidence; Neeley, Katie's favorite child; Aunt Sissy, a good "bad woman", and chiefly Francie herself, gentle, shy, imaginative. The reader shares her humiliations at school, loss of face and pride her real sorrow when her father drinks himself to death; her ambition for a college education, thwarted when she must go to work at 14; her first love affair and disillusionment. Lusty -- sometimes funny -- consistently moving, this is a book for a discriminating public, not too tender skinned... Betty Smith is more than a "promising young author". A Harper "Find". (Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1943)

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Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada's quest to change Harlem and America - Paul Tough

Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada's quest to change Harlem and America - Tough, Paul

Summary: An intriguing portrait of African-American activist Geoffrey Canada, creator of the Harlem Children's Zone, describes his radical new approach to eliminating inner-city poverty, one that proposes to transform the lives of poor children by changing their schools, their families, and their neighborhoods at the same time.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Canada has captured national attention with his bold effort to offer a cradle-to-college program for thousands of underprivileged children in Harlem. Tough, a New York Times Magazine writer, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the dramatic ups and downs of the Harlem Children's Zone, a $58 million project encompassing 97 city blocks and serving 7,000 children. Tough details Canada's own personal struggle out of poverty as a motivating factor for getting into the kid-saving business. Canada devised a conveyor belt from preschool through elementary and middle schools in Promise Academy, offering enrichment programs for children and parents to compensate for their disadvantages compared to middle-class families. Tough focuses on individual families and staff to tell a compelling story of a neighborhood fighting mightily to provide its children with the educational benefits of more well-to-do communities. Tough also views Harlem Children's Zone in the broader context of raging debate among academics and economists from James Heckman to Glen Loury regarding causes and cures of urban poverty and low school performance. This is an engrossing look at a visionary man and a bold experiment that has caught the eye of a wide range of politicians, including presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has promised to replicate the program throughout the U.S. if elected. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

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