Traveling light : on the road with America's poor / / Kath Weston

• Autore: Weston Kath <1958->
• Pubblicazione: Boston, : Beacon Press, c2008
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (286 p.)
• Disciplina: 305.5/690973
• Soggetto topico: Poor - United States; Poverty - United States
• Soggetto geografico: United States Description and travel
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-262).
• Nota di contenuto: Intro -- Contents -- Prologue: Freedom in My Pocket -- It's a Poor Rat That's Got But One Hole: An Introduction to Living Poor in a Rich Country -- I. When the Desert Fails to Bloom: Albuquerque to Missoula via Vegas -- Pennies from Heaven -- Final Call for Socorro, Truth or Consequences, Hatch, Las Cruces . . . -- Everybody Out! Hands Up against the Bus! -- The Trucker's Lament -- Keep Your Eyes on the Burrito -- Those Fools up at the VA -- Who You Calling "Food Stamps"? -- Next Stop, Sin City -- Wait Training -- The Trash Bag Racer Rally and Other Extreme Sports -- Fight! -- You Don't Say -- Already Got a Job and a Lot of Good It Done Me -- The Singing Bus -- II. Leaving the City of Cranes: Boston to Milwaukee in Two Alimentary Acts -- Awash in a Great Green Sea -- Master and Commander -- I Just Hate to Travel Like This -- Y'all Shouldn't Have Ate That Chicken -- Too-Tired Meets His Maker -- Ladies and Children First -- Anybody Asks You for the Time, You Don't Have It -- Sick as a Downsized Dog -- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? -- III. Going Coastal: Five Hundred Years of the Poverty Draft, New York to St. Augustine -- Port Question Authority -- The Amazing Debt-Defying Disappearing Bus -- Todos Que Hermanos -- Little Box of Terrors -- Dr. King on the Waterfront -- Ready to Die but Never Will -- What Did You Do with My Aunt? -- The Castillo Economy -- IV. The Fine Arts of Moving in Circles: El Monte to Bishop and Back -- Riding Along with Princess Di -- All Snakes, No Ladders -- Swagger -- The Philosopher-King Does Sacramento -- To See What There Is to See -- Books Mobile and the Secret Stash -- This Place Is a Dump -- Ride in Beauty -- V. Living on Debts and Promises: Montgomery after the Boycott, New Orleans before the Storm -- Mickey's Hot Little Cousin -- The Back Is Where It's At -- Take a Deep Breath -- Vietnam Thirty Plus -- Snap! Judgments. ; Lovebug -- Another Get-Poor-Quick Scheme -- The Borrowed Time Club -- Acknowledgments -- Author's Note -- Notes -- Read On . ..
• Sommario/riassunto: How far can you get on two tacos, one Dr. Pepper, and a little bit of conversation? What happens when you're broke and you need to get to a new job, an ailing parent, a powwow, college, or a funeral on the other side of the country? And after decades of globalization, what kind of America will you glimpse through the window on your way? For five years, Kath Weston rode the bus to find out. Weston's route takes her through northeastern cities buried under layoffs, an immigration raid in the Southwest, an antiwar rally in the capitol, and the path traced by Hurricane Katrina. Like any road story, this one has characters that linger in the imagination: the trucker who has to give up his rig to have an operation; the teenager who can turn any Hollywood movie into a rap song; the homeless veteran who dreams of running his own shrimp boat; the sketch artist who breathes life into African American history; the single mother scrambling for loose change. But Traveling Light is not just another book about people stuck in poverty. Rather, it's a book about how people move through poverty and their insights into the sweeping economic changes that affect us all. The bus is a place where unexpected generosity coexists with pickup lines and scams, where civic debates thrive and injustice finds some of its most acute analysts. Hard-working people rub shoulders with others who rap, sketch, and story new worlds into being. Folded into these poignant narratives are headlines, studies, and statistics that track the intensification of poverty and inequality as the United States enters the twenty-first-century. If sharp-eyed observations and down-to-earth critique-of the health care system, imperialism, the state of the environment, or corporate downsizing-are what you're looking for, Weston suggests the bus is the place to find it. The result is a moving meditation on living poor in the world's wealthiest nation.
• Titolo autorizzato: Traveling light
• ISBN: 0-8070-9652-0
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910972679803321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II