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

challenging informative sad medium-paced

3.75

an excellent work of ethnography but the author’s faithfulness to recreating every detail of the subjects’ experiences left extended swaths of narration feeling utterly disconnected from meaningful sociological observations and honestly was so bleak it made me nauseous to read at times. the epilogue was great and made me glad i read through it but it should have come way earlier. i do think there also should have been more interspersing of personal narratives to illustrate greater flaws within the system. not nearly enough fanfare was given to the intricacy and sheer amount of research + narrative investigation that went into this book. the way desmond illustrated how nuisance property ordinances meant that women - especially black women - experiencing domestic violence were vulnerable in yet even more ways was some of the most meaningful and impactful parts of the book for me--but not every single anecdote in the book is as neatly tied in.