Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, took classes online to earn a college degree. And she wrote relentlessly: true stories of overworked and underpaid Americans; of living on food stamps and WIC coupons. Here she explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America...

"A poignant, multi-voiced novel about life in the inner city. Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighbourhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America; like many inner-city communities, it suffers under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime, and urban blight. Scarborough the novel employs a multitude of voices to tell the story of a tight-knit neighbourhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist harassed by the...

Thirteen-year-old Jeff's life spirals downward into homelessness after his alcoholic mother loses her job.--

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

"I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Well, not this book, because I never imagined that the book I was waiting for would be so devastatingly smart and funny, so consistently entertaining and unflinchingly on target. In fact, I would like to have written it myself - if, that is, I had lived Linda Tirado's life and extracted all the hard lessons she has learned. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief...

After Amerley is raped by her employer's son she realizes she has two choices--stay quiet and keep her job or live her truth and speak up for herself and for justice. Ghana. Eldest of four girls, Amerley is offered a job working for one of her mother's old school friends. She has to accept: her wages will feed her family, help her sisters stay in school, and ensure that her mother won't have to worry about them. Amerley's move to Accra isn't easy,...

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of free markets with the quest for a more humane world--and he tells the inspiring stories of companies that are doing this work today. In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is...

An introduction to poverty and hunger answers such questions as what hunger and poverty are, how people around the world are affected by both, and how readers can help them.

From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more.

"Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now-destitute plantation; Juneau Jane, her illegitimate free-born Creole half-sister; and Hannie, Lavinia's former slave. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following dangerous roads rife with ruthless vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war...