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1 of 1 copy available
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times
Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila’s life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience.
Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters.
This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler’s candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail.
Praise for This Is All I Got
“A rich, sociologically valuable work that’s more gripping, and more devastating, than fiction.”—Booklist
“Vivid, heartbreaking. . . . Readers will be moved by this harrowing and impassioned call for change.”—Publishers Weekly
“A closely observed chronicle . . . Sandler displays her journalistic talent by unerringly presenting this dire situation. . . . An impressive blend of dispassionate reporting, pungent condemnation of public welfare, and gritty humanity.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 28, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780525531258
- File size: 289957 KB
- Duration: 10:04:04
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 17, 2020
Journalist Sandler (Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement) delivers a vivid, heartbreaking account of a homeless woman’s efforts to secure housing and a future for herself and her infant son in New York City. Tracking 22-year-old Camila (not her real name) over the course of 2015, as she gives birth, struggles to complete her college degree, and searches for affordable housing while living in shelters, Sandler contends that “among developed countries, no nation fails its single mothers as gravely as does the United States.” She details how Camila, raised by a single mother who relied on Section 8 housing vouchers to pay rent, became a ward of the state and entered a group foster home at age 15, yet made the college honor roll before her pregnancy temporarily derailed her education. Sandler scrupulously documents Camila’s efforts to navigate underresourced, byzantine, and dehumanizing public assistance programs, and examines her own conflicted feelings about bearing witness to a less-privileged woman’s pain. (Sandler’s eight-year-old daughter is “furious” that her mother refuses to offer Camila a place to stay.) Through Camila’s story, Sandler reveals the devastating consequences of America’s weakening social safety net and widening wealth gap. Readers will be moved by this harrowing and impassioned call for change.
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