--
BOOKS I READ: Evicted by Matthew Desmond (2016). The city of Milwaukee is profiled in this account of poverty, displacement, and loss. We look over Desmond’s shoulder at the pernicious affects of evictions on people struggling to cope with the realities of life. A vicious cycle abetted by poor choices, the courts, and shady landlords sustains the slums, defined as places with little or no community guardrails. What isn’t apparent to anyone on the outside, is how profitable the ‘hood can be by offering substandard housing at rents not too dissimilar to those in better neighborhoods.
Downtown Milwaukee, in the very early morning hours, is a beautiful city, but it doesn’t take long to notice that it’s a troubled city, segregated and poor. Desmond’s ethnography traces the lives of a few denizens and their families starting in 2008 and for a few years. It doesn’t take many pages to begin wondering if you are reading a book of horror. “Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life,”¹ wrote Toni Morrison, as in being put outdoors by a landlord or by family for an indiscretion. Fortunately in the epilogue, Desmond offers policy changes that can solve or mitigate the worse effects of poverty and the eviction cycle, options within reach of the richest nation on Earth.
¹ The Bluest Eye (1970)
See my Bookshop.org stand, supporting local bookstores.
See also, my reading log; or continue with the previous log entry:
