Reviews with content warning for Racism - Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

This book should be required reading. The author write this novel like an ethnography, except it is not in the first person. Matt's epilogue and policy suggestions were so thoughtful, but that is because he spent time with all of the people in this novel. Matt lived in the trailer park with the tenants, he spent time with their kids, celebrated birthdays with them and truly learned what it meant to be evicted. The entire novel you may find yourself rooting for these people as if they are fictional characters, but they are not and it is not as if this book was written in the past.

Just some of my favorite, profound quotes, but I have literally over 50 annotations.

"They can be compassionate because it's not their only option", he said of liberals who didn't live in trailer parks."

"In 83% of cases, landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them."

"The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out, even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure. They would get a little high or have a drink or do a bit of gambling or acquire a television. They might buy lobster on food stamps."

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c100's review

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emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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savvylit's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

Evicted is an enlightening glimpse into a reality that may not be familiar to all readers: the absolutely devastating and all-consuming effects of being evicted in the United States. Desmond reveals the juxtaposition between the ease with which landlords can evict their residents and the lingering difficulties that their tenants will face as a result. Once someone has been evicted, they are often forced into increasingly unsafe rentals that are the only option for someone whose background check reads "evicted." Furthermore, crippling debt and shame associated with eviction tend to follow folks for years as they attempt to seek stability. It was absolutely heartbreaking to follow many of these families as they faced homelessness or unsafe housing in between evictions.

For an informative nonfiction book, Evicted was immensely readable. I couldn't help but turn each page, hoping for each tenant to find a stable home. I also found myself increasingly disgusted by both landlords and the criminal justice system for their ability to take away a basic human right (shelter) with seeming ease or even righteousness.

Another aspect of Evicted that I enjoyed was Desmond's postscript regarding how he conducted the research for this book. I had wondered how involved he'd become in the lives of the folks that he followed and I appreciated his addressing that question. I think that Desmond's explanation of ethnography was fascinating and I was also pleased to read that he had developed genuine friendships with a lot of the interviewees.

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evalion231's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

Harrowing, heartbreaking, and overwhelming. i have little experience with poverty in America, and this book was eye opening and revolting and just sad. I felt disgusted and horrified.

This book put faces and stories to my eviction data work in a way that is missing in our report tbh.

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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I started reading this after reading Poverty, By America. I was very underwhelmed by that book, but I thought I'd try this since it's earlier and I wanted to know more about the author's specific research. Right away, the book felt super voyeuristic. I kept being bothered by the question of, "Did he get informed consent from the victims of eviction he recorded?" One of the early anecdotes in the book is the author tagging along with a landlord who's about to evict a number of people. Based on the high tensions implicit in the verbal back-and-forth, this made me even more tense. I kept wondering if he was trying to do some both-sidesism here. It could be the case that questions of methodology are answered later on or in the notes (I was listening to the audiobook, so I couldn't see those), but I'm not willing to stick around long enough to find out.

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lovetlr's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

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smoothlikebutter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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