Please join Many Hands for our first Member Book Club! We have selected two books that shine a bright light on the challenges that face women and children living in poverty in the US and the lengths to which they must often go to survive. The first selection, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, by Kathryn J. Edin, one of the nation’s leading poverty researchers, and H. Luke Shaefer, tells the stories of severely cash deprived families in Chicago, Cleveland, the Mississippi Delta, and Johnson City, Tennessee, in a manner that is intended both to inspire empathy and to change policy. Our other selection, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive, is a memoir by Stephanie Land, in which she describes her journey from middle class to homeless. On numerous lists of the best books of 2019, Maid was described by President Barack Obama as “a single mother’s personal, unflinching look at America’s class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work.”
Read one or both, or parts of each, and join us for what will surely be a rich and open conversation about poverty in America and income inequality. Our Book Club will provide an opportunity to meet and socialize with other members and to gain clarity about the lived experience of the people Many Hands exists to serve–women, children, and families in socioeconomic need.
When: Tuesday, March 9 @ 8:00 pm
Where: Click here to RSVP and receive the Zoom link
Questions? Please email Membership co-chairs Lynne Battle and Anna Gunnarsson Pfeiffer at membership@manyhandsdc.org.
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More about Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive
- “The Brutal Economy of Cleaning Other People’s Messes, for $9 an Hour,” The New York Times, January 31, 2019
- “From middle class to homeless: A mother’s unapologetic memoir,” The Washington Post, February 1, 2019
- “In ‘Maid,’ A Single Mother Finds ‘No Way’ to Make it on Minimum Wage,” NPR, January 29, 2019; includes audio of interview with Stephanie Land by Terry Gross for “Fresh Air”
More about $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
- “Review: What is it like to live on ‘$2.00 a Day’? New book examines deep poverty in the U.S.” Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2015
- “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” Goodreads.com
- “Living on $2 a day: Exploring extreme poverty in America,” PBS NewsHour, December 27, 2015; includes video of interview with Kathryn Edin
