Anonymous wrote:Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Is that the one about the family in the Bronx with a gazillion characters, having babies, getting evicted, moving from one awful apartment to the next and the main character gets caught up with a thug ...?
That was such a crazy story it couldn't have been fiction.

Another vote for Nickel and Dimed. the author basically goes undercover as a minimum wage employee in 3 or 4 different areas of the country over the course of about a year (might have been more or less, I can't remember as I read this a few years ago). She did not go home to her comfortable life after her shifts - she attempted to live entirely off her wages. It's a pretty impactful book.

The other Wes Moore

The Battle for Room 314. Made anything I've ever experienced as a high school teacher in FCPS seem like a cakewalk.

Working in the Shadows (not much about children, but still worth the read if you're interested in wage and poverty issues)

Am I the only one who didn't like Nickel and Dimed? I read it when it came out, and I recall feeling like it lacked any real insight.

Anonymous wrote:Ruby Payne- Framework for Understanding Poverty

But you won't. Because she doesn't.

Ruby Payne- Framework for Understanding Poverty

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Anonymous wrote:Glass castle
It was really good. I think thats the title.

My sister in law gave me this book yesterday. Weird.

The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Angela's Ashes - I still cannot bear the parts (and I read this YEARS ago) where mothers would gloat about their kids eating while other kids went hungry.

I also read Angela's Ashes years ago and I found it to be so stressful to read: McCourt made me feel I was going through the indignities of the poverty he experienced along with him. His experience of being poor in Ireland was so much worse than when he was here in the US. A book like this can be really eye opening.

PP. Yes, he is a very talented writer to make his readers ache with him. And to make them ache years later remembering with him. The Week also listed a book called White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. ("convicts,orphans and other "waste" people dispatched to the dangerous New World...").
OP, I know you found your book, but this will be a great searchable thread so I thought I would add that since it is fresh on my mind.

Ruby Payne is worth the read, but be careful with it and do your own thinking. She's a bit of a classist, and has been criticized for such, and her work is self-published, not peer reviewed. There's no research to suggest there's any "culture" of poverty.

Glass castle
It was really good. I think thats the title.

Anonymous wrote:You could watch Country Boys, and Poor Kids, which were 2 PBS documentaries. They are really eye opening in regards to how many kids s get zero support at home, and how their home life actually works against them succeeding.

Thanks PP. I've seen both of them and they are heart wrenching. I finally found the book I was searching for on the shelves at the library next to Nickel and Dimed. It is called Our Kids. Thanks for everyone's suggestions!