A searingly candid look at growing up "without," edited by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Children of Crisis series. In a land of seemingly endless plenty, Growing Up Poor offers a startling and beautiful collection of stories, poems, and essays about growing up without. Searing in their candor, understated, and often unexpectedly moving, the selections range from a young girl's story of coming of age in the slums of New York at the turn of the twentieth century and a southern family's struggles during the Depression, to contemporary stories of urban and rural poverty by some of our foremost authors. Divided into four thematically organized sections (on the material circumstances of poverty, denigration at the hands of others, the working poor, and moments of resolve and resiliency), the book mixes the work of experienced authors--many of whom write autobiographically about poverty they have experienced first-hand--with the work of students and other contemporary writers. Edited and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist Robert Coles, Growing Up Poor gives eloquent voice to those judged not by who they are, but by what they lack.
Contributors include:
Sherman Alexie
Dorothy Allison
Raymond Carver
Sandra Cisneros
Ralph Ellison
Richard Ford
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Luis Rodriguez
Betty Smith
Gary Soto
Mildred Taylor
Sylvia Watanabe
William Carlos Williams
