The paper you’re reading this review in made it to your hands because you gave $2 to someone who really needed it. Real Change, as a newspaper and as an organization, seeks to help those people who haven’t received what the American Dream promised to provide. “Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country,” edited by Alissa Quart and David Wallis, is a collection of essays and reports written by people like the vendor you bought this paper from.
It may happen that some of you find yourselves selling this paper some day to make ends meet. You may balk at that idea, through pride or fear, but there is evidence in “Going for Broke” that more of us are balanced on a razor’s edge than should be.
This anthology from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project is meant to demonstrate reporting from voices under represented in the media landscape. Instead of a hard focus on New York City, LA or other large metropolitan areas, there are stories from the thousands and thousands of other places where people live, the parts of the country that many people think of as too depressing or boring to consider. That mentality at once creates the need for this type of publication as it also generates the circumstances that bring its authors to the places they find themselves struggling to survive.
In the book’s introduction, co-editor and contributor Quart cautions readers not to feel sad about the essays that follow, as they are filled with stories that are hard to read. This nods at the intended audience of the book — those who are ready to sympathize with the writers, those who sympathize with the newspaper vendor. And that sympathy is worthwhile.
What also exists in these pages, as I mentioned, is evidence. At least for me. Evidence that people are struggling all over the country — but struggling because of broken systems, not because of the populist, racist nonsense being peddled in some media outlets and chambers of Congress. What comes through time and again in these essays is that existing support systems are inadequate, ineffective or hopelessly misguided; for example, Katie Prout’s piece about Medicaid or the essay about eviction by Anne Elizabeth Moore.
I grew up in a place where many of these experiences would be considered “sob stories.” In conservative parlance, that means an excuse that explains why you are less-than or undeserving — see Bobbi Dempsey’s story of pet loss. And having that nagging, scoffing, sneering set of retorts in my head made me look for the way in which this anthology could be construed as a counteroffensive or attack on that viewpoint. It’s not. Nor is it meant to be.
I found myself identifying with portions of many of the essays, such as the idea of having to just pick any job that will take you because there are bills to pay — even if it ruins your resume and chances for better jobs in the future; see the entirety of “Section 4: Work.” I found myself hearing my story in other people’s voices.
I realized that the problem is, in fact, bigger than me and that there are many, many people facing it as well. That echo helped to create deeper sympathy for the authors and to start having some for myself. The feeling of isolation began to fade.
The pieces collected in “Going for Broke” go back to 2014, and many came from the heart of the pandemic in 2020. In that way, there is sometimes a hovering feeling of anachronism, like the authors are dwelling on the low points.
The truth, though, is that the essays highlight our desire to move away from and forget about the events that really brought many of these conversations to the fore.
As has been said many times before, the pandemic exposed an enormous number of cracks in our systems. For now we have papered over the worst and are trying to move on. This anthology works to remind us that not all of those cracks have been fixed. In fact, by ignoring them, we are actively choosing to make things worse.
By having pieces in this anthology from all across the country and from many ethnicities, genders, orientations and social statuses, I think the goal, the tool and the approach of this work is to generate sympathy. There are so many viewpoints in here that at some point there will be something that rings true. Everyone will have an “a-ha!” moment whereby the sympathy that exists for that moment, that person, that acquaintance can be replanted and related to everything else written beside it. To identify with one portion of one person’s story is to identify with all of it. Not directly, though, but through tangents and associations. The sympathy can spread and change what could have been a sob story into the type of cogent exposure needed to start helping.
That help could be taking in a homeless couple — see the piece by Annabelle Gurwitch — or it could be simply not dismissing those who have less than you.
If we stop helping one another, eventually we will all fall.
Read more of the April 3–9, 2024 issue.