New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy [Hardcover]

Earl Shorris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

A look at the daily lives of the poor in contemporary America analyzes their absence from, and apathy towards, politics and power, and suggests how they might rediscover their connection to the larger society and bring democracy to fruition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

From a noted sociologist: poverty redefined and ways to conquer it.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Sociologist Shorris (Latinos, 1992, etc.) uses anecdotal evidence to humanize this overview of poverty in America while presenting his own very personal point of view on how to remedy it. The result of traveling the country and viewing the worst of American poverty, this study offers views of often ignored impoverished areas (e.g., northern Florida, Jewish Brooklyn) as well as the heavily scrutinized inner city. Shorris coins a unique terminology to define and unite these disparate scenarios--he speaks of the ``surround of force,'' the word ``force'' implying not violence, but the pressures (drugs, hunger, inadequate health care) that plague nearly all poor people. Furthermore, Shorris is careful to make the distinction between ``relative'' and ``absolute'' poverty, noting that American poverty is relative because, via the medium of television, poor Americans are able to see their nonimpoverished countrymen. Shorris's background in academics and philosophy (he was a teenage scholarship student at the University of Chicago in the late 1950s) is apparent, not only through his Aristotelian belief that a political life is the remedy for the problem at hand, but also in his thesis (put to the test in the so-called Clemente Course that he documents in the book's second half) that an education in the humanities could be the solution to multigenerational poverty. While it has become a bit of a truism that only education can truly help the poor, Shorris's innovation is in his emphasis on a liberal education on the order of the Chicago curriculum as he experienced it. While Shorris chooses some curious enemies (for example, while approving of New Deal programs that put the poor to work, he criticizes President Clinton for supporting workfare) and shows his age with his inability to understand inner-city artistic forms like graffiti and hip-hop, he genuinely cares--a characteristic noticeably lacking in many who claim to want to eliminate poverty. (First serial to Harper's) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393045544
• ISBN-13: 978-0393045543
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #582,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shorris hits soft underbelly of American equality myth, October 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy (Hardcover)

Go ahead. Say it out loud: "Poverty," "Poor," "The Poor." Most of us feel at least uncomfortable if not repulsed when saying and thinking about these words. We push poverty away, deny its existence, avoid it and its implications. Not Earl Shorris. He plunges right in with his book "New American Blues," and takes us to places and through thoughts and situations that many of us would never choose to visit. Shorris, with insight like sharp knife, cuts to the quick and calls the question, what happens when people are acted upon? What happens when people are not at liberty to choose their response? Or on an even deeper level, what happens when people do not know that the liberty to choose their response is an option?

Poverty in America, the blemish on the model's perfect skin, the scarred lip framing the endless smile, the Achilles heel of the "land of milk and honey," the ugly duckling shunted aside by the American myth, is what we meet as we travel with Shorris through America's underbelly. Shorris takes the bold step into "the surround" as he calls it, the enclosure, into the pen, into the hopeless, isolated entrapment of the poor in America and asks how this poverty came to be and why it persists. Perhaps a question worth asking in the wealthiest nation on the planet?

Through his many examples of the dialogue of hopelessness and entrapment in the surround he brings the dark, perpetual stuckness of poverty in America into the light. For readers with the courage to look, it becomes crystal clear to just what extent the alienation and atomization of the citizens of the USA continue to drive a stake between the American ideals of equality, truth and justice for all -- and the cold bruising reality that is out there hiding (just barely) in the shadows.

Shorris highlights the critical importance of supporting the individual in developing the ability to reflect, to develop the capability not simply to fall into the patterns of knee-jerk reaction, but to become conscious of the surround. Through interaction "in the polis," by becoming involved in our community, with the people around us, the outer dialogue can be changed and a new dialogue can be internalized. It is critical to note that for those whose lives are within the surround of poverty he posits no mind space between stimulus and response, no dialogue allowing for alternatives. Perhaps the experience of Viktor Frankl is illustrative in this regard. I quote from Stephen Covey: "One, day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" -- the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Viktor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response." Shorris shows that the multigenerational poor in America, the land of the free, are neither aware of nor able to activate this power. The poor abdicate their option to decide for themselves, and the structure in which they live reinforces that abdication.

However, there is a thread of hope in the tapestry Shorris weaves for the reader as he poignantly reminds us that the clutches of the surround can be broken. Each individual must transform from unconsciously apolitical to consciously political awareness. As the forces of our consumer society press us toward alienation, we must turn the tide and engage. Though we live in the mass, perhaps the most profound solutions do lie within the individual, and can be activated through participation and integration. If that is so, what are we doing with the precious individuals in our land?

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a must for all educators, March 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy (Hardcover)

This book is about confronting poverty, about empowering the poor to take control of their lives, and is thus a major sociological document (though adoption of its agenda would put a small army of social fix-it people out of work). Just as important, though, it is a book about education, one that validates once again the irreplaceable treasure of a liberal education. The American educational establishment is in thrall to vocationalism, particularly, to preparation for corporate life (see "What Business Wants from Higher Education"). Aristotle warned us about this narrowly utilitarian view of mental culture, calling it the education of a slave. Taking to heart Robert Hutchins' aphorism ("The best education for the best is the best education for all"), Shorris took his idealism to the inner city and put a group of social cast-offs in touch with their powers--their intelligence, their sensitivity, their decency. Most went on to study successfully in college. We can't clone Mr. Shorris once, much less the thousands of times necessary to staff all the classrooms where someone like him is needed, but we can urge teachers and administrators to read his book. His book is a blessed antidote to the mountains of New Age educational tracts touting panaceas like cyber instruction, collaborative learning, education "tailored to the individual learning styles of each student," and other approaches that stress method at the expense of content.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book that Will be Remembered, May 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy (Hardcover)

If you care about the future of this country, read this book