Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

10 reviews

shannahtan's review against another edition

challenging sad medium-paced

I feel weird rating this book because it’s almost a memoir of these people’s lives. 

Ethnography is so interesting because the person is actually trying to live this life in first person. Desmond mentioned he didn’t pay folks for interviews, which in part I understand that he maybe didn’t want to get a biased point of view. However, I feel like they should get paid for this book as he was telling their life stories. Although Desmond recognizes his privilege, he still got to leave the trailer park. He was never evicted. The people in the book are still living this life of eviction. All in all, the book is dense and is a very good window into the life of so many people in the United States. The last two chapters explain how a universal housing voucher has helped other countries combat houselessness. I tandem read this through audiobook and ebook.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Child abuse

Moderate: Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Toxic relationship, Violence, Domestic abuse, Addiction, and Alcoholism

rspades's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Toxic relationship, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Addiction, Animal death, Child abuse, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Gun violence, Mental illness, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Murder, and Physical abuse

cady_sass's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

A bleak and brutal look at the reality of poverty in America through the eyes of a number of Milwaukee residents constantly teetering the edge of homelessness. It’s easy to get lost in these peoples stories and forget this is nonfiction, for many who have never seen or experienced or even imagined poverty this reads like fiction. The endless cycle created by the American government is a tough pill to swallow. Imagining a woman choosing to tolerate physical abuse rather than call the police and risk being evicted for being a problem tenant? That’s real and that’s horrific. And that’s just one of many, many stories told here. This is another book that I wish everyone could be compelled to read, there is a deeper understanding here and the empathy that comes with that understanding is critical to making progressive change. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Violence, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Classism, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, Abandonment, Ableism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Grief, Gun violence, Medical content, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, and Suicidal thoughts

maevebeck's review against another edition

emotional sad tense slow-paced

3.0

excellent source for understanding poverty in a more intimate and human way. overall the story desmond tells is confusing and kind of all over the place. few stories actually have a beginning middle and end ?? i understand that they’re real stories tho and that’s not always possible. very good book though!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Incest, Murder, Sexual assault, Animal death, Child death, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Violence, Addiction, and Child abuse

albernikolauras's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

A heart-wrenching nonfiction book following families in Milwaukee that were evicted during the 2008 and 2009 recession. Desmond gives each individual humanity within his writing as he describes them without judgment or censor, from the landlords to the eviction company to the individuals left homeless afterward.

There wasn't a moment that you didn't feel the anger and frustration that we choose to treat people this way - as if their life doesn't matter. Desmond is clear about the ripple effect instable housing has on people - emotionally and physically - and the community they live in. How it effects the children stuck in this cycle, hopping from school to school while balancing taking care of their siblings.

Desmond wraps up the book describing his place within these situations, how he lived near them, when he intervened to help the families he followed, and what we can do to help prevent the worst of this. It is frightening that this has likely only gotten worse with the increasing housing prices and cost of living with no real increase in government support.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Drug use, Addiction, and Mental illness

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Child abuse, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Violence, Toxic friendship, Racism, Gun violence, Sexual assault, and War

_forestofpages's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexism, and Cursing

Moderate: Racial slurs, Sexual harassment, Child abuse, and Child death

edie_reads's review

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Mental illness, Murder, Racism, Sexism, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Grief

Minor: Animal death, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Excrement, and Cursing

wordswithjustine's review

challenging dark informative sad medium-paced

4.5

This book is a sobering and insightful look at poverty in America, especially in regards to housing.  It was well-written and will be on my mind for a long time.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Physical abuse

katsudonburi's review against another edition

challenging informative sad slow-paced

5.0

A brutal and incredibly upsetting look at poverty and the damage eviction does to people and their families; what keeps it from reading as trauma porn is the author's deep commitment to the humanity of his subjects and constant examination of the systems that have not so much failed them as been designed to exploit them. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Racism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

Minor: Animal death, Forced institutionalization, Panic attacks/disorders, and Rape

sherbertwells's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

“We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.” (5)

Evicted by Matthew Desmond challenged my biases.

Not my biases about poverty; it pretty much confirmed my perspective there. Landlords buy properties, neglect them and take advantage of racialized poverty to fatten their own pockets. Poor women, especially single mothers, face a nigh-impossible struggle to build a stable home. Neighborhoods and the availability of housing can improve or destabilize a person’s life.

I believed these things before reading Evicted and Desmond’s extensive footnotes didn’t contradict them. The bias that Evicted overturned was a subtle parasite that I didn’t know had made a home in my system: the bias against sociologists.

As the child of an urban historian (one who studies Milwaukee, no less), I was raised believing in the gaslamp of context, the noble, futile quest through years of obfuscation and the sacred darkness of the unknowable. Compared to valiant historians, sociologists seemed to have it easy. If they wanted to do research, they could just step outside and interview their neighbors! 

But Desmond’s solid storytelling opened my eyes to the potential of a good sociologist, which he is. Specifically, he’s an ethnologist, one whose front-line research forms the backbone of Evicted. The book follows several families—some living in a trailer park on Milwaukee’s white South Side, others living in predominately-black North Side slums—face eviction during the winter of 2008, when America’s housing crisis led to widespread displacement among low-income households. Their individual journeys paint a portrait of poverty in the 21st century, humanizing a group that wealthy and middle-class readers might otherwise demonize, victimize or otherwise simply ignore.

“People like Larraine lived with so many compounded limitations that it was difficult to imagine the amount of good behavior or self-control that would allow them to lift themselves out of poverty. 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” (219).

While the stories of renters like Arleen, Scott and Larraine provide remarkable testimony on the experiences of being poor in America, Desmond’s scholarship is what makes Evicted convincing. The footnotes go on for 79 pages—25% of the length of the actual story—and provide illuminating explanations as well as citations for everything from Carol Stack’s All Our Kin to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Desmond strikes an efficient balance between dramatizing his subjects and demonstrating his scholarly credentials.

But there’s still something missing from Desmond’s work, something whose absence ultimately hurts his argument: history. Desmond insists that Evicted “tells an American story” because its setting is indicative of the condition of many major American cities (5). But in Milwaukee history, city government has played a larger-than-average role in shaping residents' living situations. Desmond concedes that “Milwaukee used to be flush with good jobs” in the early 20th century, but neglects to mention that these conditions were created by a string of Socialist mayors who encouraged labor unions, public works and welfare programs, and who faded from the spotlight in the 1960s as white working-class voters felt threatened by Milwaukee’s growing African-American population. A deeper examination of the history of segregation in Milwaukee would also aid Desmond’s arguments about the differences between white and black renters’ experiences. But it’s also possible that I have not completely overcome my bias against sociologists.

Evicted was my first foray into sociological nonfiction, as I imagine that it was for many of the 66,954 readers who left ratings of the book on Goodreads. It probably won’t be my last. Unlike many ethnologists, Desmond chooses to remove himself from the central narrative; an afterword explains his relationships to the subjects and his role in the events of the story. When documenting an issue as large as America’s problems with urban housing, he claims, “‘I’ don’t matter” (335).

Perhaps that’s a lesson I need to take to heart. Evicted is a good book with a strong message about a big problem, and if it changes American housing for the better, I would feel nothing but pride.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Addiction, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Child abuse

Minor: Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Mental illness, Gun violence, Grief, Death, and Child death