Best of
Poverty

2010

The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough


Katie Smith Milway - 2010
    This year their crop is poor, and they may not have enough to eat or to sell for other essentials, such as health care, school uniforms and books. When María's father must leave home to find work, she is left in charge of their garden. Then a new teacher comes to María's school and introduces her to sustainable farming practices that yield good crops. As María begins to use the same methods at home, she too sees improvements, which allow her family to edge their way out of the grip of the greedy ?coyotes? --- the middlemen who make profits on the backs of poor farmers. Little by little, the farms --- and the hopes --- of María and her neighbors are transformed as good gardens begin to grow.

Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission


Christopher L. Heuertz - 2010
    But sometimes Christians inadvertently marginalize and objectify the very ones they most want to serve. Chris Heuertz, international director of Word Made Flesh, and theologian and ethicist Christine Pohl show how friendship is a Christian vocation that can bring reconciliation and healing to our broken world. They contend that unlikely friendships are at the center of an alternative paradigm for mission, where people are not objectified as potential converts but encountered in a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity. When we befriend those on the margins of society by practicing hospitality and welcome, we create communities where righteousness and justice can be lived out. Heuertz and Pohl's reflections offer fresh insight into Christian mission and what it means to be the church in the world today.

Firestorm!


Joan Hiatt Harlow - 2010
    Poppy plans to change her thieving ways, but when Justin loses money at his father’s jewelry store and Poppy is accused of stealing it, she flees back onto the streets. Justin insists on searching for her—just as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 breaks out. Alternately narrated by Poppy and Justin, this is a gripping story of right and wrong, trust and forgiveness, and finding hope in the ashes of destruction.

Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco


Teresa Gowan - 2010
    Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates around the problem of homelessness—often set in terms of sin, sickness, and the failure of the social system—have come to profoundly shape how homeless people survive and make sense of their plights. In Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, Teresa Gowan vividly depicts the lives of homeless men in San Francisco and analyzes the influence of the homelessness industry on the streets, in the shelters, and on public policy. Gowan shows some of the diverse ways that men on the street in San Francisco struggle for survival, autonomy, and self-respect. Living for weeks at a time among homeless men—working side-by-side with them as they collected cans, bottles, and scrap metal; helping them set up camp; watching and listening as they panhandled and hawked newspapers; and accompanying them into soup kitchens, jails, welfare offices, and shelters—Gowan immersed herself in their routines, their personal stories, and their perspectives on life on the streets. She observes a wide range of survival techniques, from the illicit to the industrious, from drug dealing to dumpster diving. She also discovered that prevailing discussions about homelessness and its causes—homelessness as pathology, homelessness as moral failure, and homelessness as systemic failure—powerfully affect how homeless people see themselves and their ability to change their situation. Drawing on five years of fieldwork, this powerful ethnography of men living on the streets of the most liberal city in America, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, makes clear that the way we talk about issues of extreme poverty has real consequences for how we address this problem—and for the homeless themselves.

Effectual Entrepreneurship


Stuart Read - 2010
    Open this book. Inside you will find everything you need.This book contains:a vivid new way to learn about and to practice entrepreneurship. practical exercises, questions and activities for each step in your process. specific principles derived from the heuristics of expert entrepreneurs. 70+ case briefs of entrepreneurs across industries, geographies and time. applications to social entrepreneurship as well as the creation of opportunities in large enterprises. data that will challenge assumptions you might have about entrepreneurship. a broader perspective about the science of entrepreneurship and implications for how individuals can shape their own situation. extra resources are also available on the accompanying website: http: //www.effectuation.org/You will find these ideas presented in a concise, modular, graphical form, perfect for those learning to be entrepreneurs or already in the thick of things.If you want to learn about entrepreneurship in a way that emphasizes action, this book is for you. If you have already launched your entrepreneurial career and are looking for new perspectives, this book is for you. Even if you are someone who feels your day job is no longer creating anything novel or valuable, and wonders how to change it, this book is for you. Anyone using entrepreneurship to create the change they want to see in the world will find a wealth of thought-provoking material, expert advice, and practical techniques inside.So what are you waiting for?

Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression


Don Nardo - 2010
    She wanted to use the power of the image to effect political change, but even she could hardly have expected the effect that a simple portrait of a worn-looking woman and her children would have on history. This image, taken at a migrant workers' camp in Nipomo, California, would eventually come to be seen as the very symbol of the Depression. The photograph helped reveal the true cost of the disaster on human lives and shocked the U.S. government into providing relief for the millions of other families devastated by the Depression.

Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World


Mark R. Gornik - 2010
    In this collection of essays, he brings together personal, historical, theological, and contemporary perspectives to issue a passionate call to work for justice and peace.An essential complement to his now classic Until Justice and Peace Embrace, the forthcoming Love and Justice, and Justice, this book makes clear why Wolterstorff is one of the church’s most incisive and compelling voices. Between the Times invites us not simply into new ways of thinking, but a transformational way of life.

Safe from the Past


Patricia Miller Mauro - 2010
    Her mother finally tells her she must go to college so she can break out of this cycle of poverty and hopelessness. But how can she when she has no money and absolutely no confidence or self esteem? Read this true story to discover what hope, faith and determination can do to change a life.

The Lunch Thief


Anne C. Bromley - 2010
    Once a week she tucks in a slice of herspecial lemon pound cake. Rafael saw Kevin, a new kid in his class, sneakhis lunch bag from underneath his desk and tuck it in his backpack. Buthow can he do something about the theft without picking a fight? Inspiredby his mother's advice to “Use your mouth before your fists,” Rafael bideshis time, but other kids' lunches are disappearing,too. On an errandwith his mom, Rafael sees Kevin carrying a bundle of laundry into amotel room, and his mom tells him Kevin's family might be one ofthe families who lost their homes in the recent wildfires. Rafaelrethinks his anger. The next day, instead of accusing Kevin, Rafaelinvites him to share his lunch, letting Kevin know he's been caught, butoffering friendship as well as lunch.

After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken


Kent Annan - 2010
    Along the way he discovers that he is not alone, that from the psalmists of old to our neighbors today, people have followed life to the edge of meaning and have heard--God even there, calling for honest faith.

Five Miles Away, a World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America


James E. Ryan - 2010
    Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones? In his important new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia--one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day. The Supreme Court, in accord with the wishes of the Nixon administration, allowed the suburbs to lock nonresidents out of their school systems. City schools, whose student bodies were becoming increasingly poor and black, simply received more funding, a measure that has proven largely ineffective, while the independence (and superiority) of suburban schools remained sacrosanct. Weaving together court opinions, social science research, and compelling interviews with students, teachers, and principals, Ryan explains why all the major education reforms since the 1970s--including school finance litigation, school choice, and the No Child Left Behind Act--have failed to bridge the gap between urban and suburban schools and have unintentionally entrenched segregation by race and class. As long as that segregation continues, Ryan forcefully argues, so too will educational inequality. Ryan closes by suggesting innovative ways to promote school integration, which would take advantage of unprecedented demographic shifts and an embrace of diversity among young adults. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written by one of the nation's leading education law scholars, Five Miles Away, A World Apart ties together, like no other book, a half-century's worth of education law and politics into a coherent, if disturbing, whole. It will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered why our schools are so unequal and whether there is anything to be done about it.

The Can Man


Laura E. Williams - 2010
    To earn money, a young boy decides to collect and redeem empty soft drink cans, but ends up giving away his money to help a local homeless man.

Hidden in the Rubble: A Haitian Pilgrimage to Compassion and Resurrection


Gerard Thomas Straub - 2010
    But even before the earthquake, as the photos and reflections in this book make clear, Haiti was already a disaster zone. Filmmaker Gerry Straub was there weeks before the earthquake, and he returned soon after, to continue his project: to capture in words and images the reality of Haiti's poorboth their sufferings and their spiritand to find in this reality the face of God. Straub takes us into Cit Soleil, one of the most wretched slums on earth, where kids play amidst the stench of open sewers, where people eat pies made of clay. After the earthquake, he follows exhausted doctors and aid workers working desperately to relieve the suffering. Hidden in the Rubble opens a window on a scene of desperate crisis, but it is ultimately a powerful and haunting challenge to enter into compassionate solidarity with the poor at our doorstep.

Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America's Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group


John Atlas - 2010
    --Todd GitlinSeeds of Change goes beyond the headlines of the last Presidential campaign to describe what really happened in ACORN's massive voter registration drives, why it triggered an unrelenting attack by Fox News and the Republican Party, and how it confronted its internal divisions and scandals.Based on Atlas's own eyewitness original reporting, as the only journalist to have access to ACORN's staff and board meetings, this book documents the critical transition from founder Wade Rathke, a white New Orleans radical to Bertha Lewis, a Brooklyn African American activist.The story begins in the 1970s, when a small group of young men and women, led by a charismatic college dropout, began a quest to help the powerless help themselves. In a tale full of unusual characters and dramatic conflicts, the book follows the ups and downs of ACORN's organizers and members as they confront big corporations and unresponsive government officials in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Little Rock, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities.The author follows the course of local and national campaigns to organize unions, fight the subprime mortgage crisis, promote living wages for working people, struggle for affordable housing and against gentrification, and help Hurricane Katrina's survivors return to New Orleans.The book dispels the conservative myth that we can only help the poor through private soup kitchens and charity and the liberal myth that the solution rests simply with more government services. Seeds of Change, not only provides a gripping look at ACORN's four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy.An offering of The Progressive Book Club.

A Thousand Resurrections


Maria Garriott - 2010
    Garriott shares the challenges, heartbreaks, lessons, and joys of planting a church and raising five children in a challenging neighborhood. A Thousand Resurrections appeals to any reader needing encouragement, and is a must-read for those interested in urban ministry. It is the story of a woman participating in the transformation of the city while being transformed herself.

The Brothers' Keepers


John H. Paddison - 2010
    Paddison and Charles D. Orvik. Based on the book's tone, theme, and literary intention, this work will prove to be a significant contribution to contemporary literature. As a novel dealing with the saga of one family, the work closely analyzes an ongoing cultural myth of small Midwest American towns and families-that is, the idea and ideal of family values that have come to symbolize that geographic region. The story takes place in the Northeastern part of North Dakota, in the fictional town of Farmington, during and after the Great Depression. The storyline develops around the neglect and then abandonment of five young boys-the Lambson brothers-by their alcoholic mother and their drifter father, and indeed by society in general. Having been exhaustively researched, the novel details in a sensitive yet realistic way the brothers' development under very adverse physical and social conditions and the five boys' eventual outcome. The brothers' hardships form a strong, familial bond between them-the only definition of family that they can construct from their aberrant circumstances. Events of the story are structured so as to extract meaning from the youngsters' trials. The broader narrative, though, becomes an attempt to understand how a society that traditionally has always placed so much emphasis on family and family values, at least seemingly so, can condone such treatment of the five youngsters. The narrative voice is sensitive yet forceful in adding understanding of their tribulations, thus bringing light to two social ills that plague America today-child neglect and child abuse. In a larger sense, this probing of social responsibility is relevant to today's society, where children increasingly becoming the victims of abuse and neglect.

Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of New Friars


Scott A. BesseneckerAshley Barker - 2010
    Presented here are five "signs of life," showcased by this network of movements best referred to as "new friars." God's kingdom in the hands of the people of God, the contributors to this book show us, is first and foremost incarnational, which leads necessarily to gospel witness that is devotional, communal, missional and marginal. With a survey of the history of new friar movements and commentary by forerunner, this seminal book, edited by Scott A. Bessenecker, paints a picture of mission that is new only because it has been neglected for so long, a mission that is truly good news to the people in its path. With contributions from Viv Grigg, Craig and Nayhouy Greenfield, Derek Engdahl, Jean-Luc Krieg, Chris Heuertz, Darren Prince, Jose Penate Aceves, John Hayes and Ash Barker, this book brings together a chorus of voices at the front lines of what God is doing through the new friar community.

The Trouble With Dilly


Rachna Gilmore - 2010
    That new kid, Gedion—Sulky-face— is shoplifting from her family’s store, and her mother is just letting it happen. No wonder her parents can’t afford to buy her those special hockey skates she’s always wanted. But as soon as Dilly tells on Gedion, she realizes that some things are better left unsaid. Gedion’s father has just lost his job, and he has to put back some groceries to pay for the chocolate bars his son has stolen. To make up for her thoughtless action, Dilly comes up with the most fabulous, beautiful, wonderful idea: she’ll throw a Christmas party for Gedion and his parents, just like the ones Gedion’s father said they used to have in the old country.With her best friends on board, Dilly’s plan grows and grows. Soon the whole community is involved—from pipsqueak Simon to Dilly’s grandmother, a.k.a. the Great White Hen—with some hilarious and unexpected results. But has the party become too big? How will they raise all the money they need without Dilly having to dip into her own savings for those hockey skates she’s been yearning for? With Sulky-face always glaring at her, Dilly wonders why she’s bothering in the first place.