Poverty | Book Chatter

Nightcrawling
By Leila Mottley
Knopf, 9780593318935, June 2022, 288pp.

The Short of It:

Gritty, but at times lovely.

The Rest of It:

This story unfolds in layers, slowly revealing the beauty at its heart. I have a confession to make though. I finished this book in the midst of all my health stuff and totally forgot to review it. In an attempt to do right by the author, I am writing it now but I finished it early March so I will do my best to recall all the details.

A dazzling novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system. ~ Indiebound

Kiara and her brother Marcus are doing their best not to get thrown out of their run down apartment in East Oakland. After their mother is sent away for something she did, Kiara frantically tries to rally her brother into getting a job to help pay the rent. Kiara, being a minor, worries every second about being taken away by social services. The only reason she was allowed to stay is because Marcus is of age. But Marcus is far from able to raise Kiara. His lofty ideas on how to make money, which include becoming a famous musician, haven’t panned out and he is reluctant to do actual work. Plus, drugs enter the mix which complicate things.

In addition to caring for herself, she’s trying to keep her nine-year-old neighbor fed and safe when his mother abandons him. This includes paying his rent when she can so that he doesn’t get evicted either. Without a steady stream of income, she can barely do this and no one else seems to be stepping up to help so out of desperation, she begins streetwalking. What begins with one or two paid “favors” quickly becomes something else when local law enforcement wants favors in return for keeping Kiara out of jail. Without a pimp, Kiara has little say in what’s being asked of her. She doesn’t want to end up in jail but she also doesn’t want to end up dead.

My book club read this a couple of months back and had mixed feelings about it. East Oakland is a depressing place. It seemed like everything that could go wrong for Kiara did, but there was also this sense of ownership that she possessed and for that, I had a lot of respect for her character. Oakland, riddled with problems as it was, was still her home. She never gave up on the city. I respected how she carried herself in such a mature way, given that she was just a child herself.

Many things will frustrate you about her situation but there are beautiful moments too. The author was just seventeen herself when this book was written. Unbelievable! Such maturity along with a sense of place. I really liked these characters and highly recommend it.

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Hillbilly Elegy
By J.D. Vance
Harper Paperbacks, 9780062300553, (Paperback) May 2018, 288pp.

The Short of It:

An important read, even if you think you won’t be able to relate to it.

The Rest of It:

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis–that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. – Indiebound

I had been avoiding this book when it was selected by my book club. Truthfully, I wasn’t interested in it because I knew it would hit too close to home, and it did. I didn’t grow up in the same region as Vance but I could identify with nearly everything Vance encountered growing up: addiction, abuse, poverty, and having what seemed like no other options for living.

But I could also identify with a need to belong, a need to succeed and the well-meaning intentions of some of the folks around me. Vance tells his story with brutal honestly but his story is peppered with hope throughout, which makes this memoir a very interesting read about the long-term effects of class decline on future generations and it begs the question, how can we fix it?

The full impact of this memoir didn’t hit me until the last third of the book. That is when Vance gets to the point. The never-ending cycle of poverty for some, make it impossible for them to rise above it. How could they without the realization that there is more out there? If the norm is poverty and abuse, and it’s all they see, what motivation exists to change their situation for the better?

I know some people will argue with that logic. That people have a choice and they choose to be poor but for many, they grew up that way. They were never shown or given the opportunity to live differently. Vance suggests that the people who manage to pull themselves out of this cycle are the ones who were introduced to something different. I agree. It’s the number one reason why I work with teens and the homeless. I had people in my life that showed me a different way and that made all the difference. I want to be that person to someone else.

Hillbilly Elegy is a powerful read and if you don’t want to read it or think you can’t relate to it in some way, try, because it’s important to know how other people live. For our society to flourish we need role models to show us a better way because no matter where you stand politically, brokenness is evident all around us if you look.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…