Hand to Mouth

Trade Paperback

The Truth About Being Poor in a Wealthy World

Linda Tirado knows from experience what it is to be poor, to struggle to make ends meet. She was working two jobs - as a food-service worker in a chain restaurant and a voting rights activist at a non-profit organization - and has two children and a husband who struggled to readjust to civilian life after his last tour in Iraq. She knows what it's like to have problems you wish you could fix, but no money, energy or resources to fix them, and no hope of getting any.

In 2013, an essay on the everyday realities of poverty that Tirado wrote and posted online was read and shared around the world. In Hand to Mouth, she gives a searing, witty, compassionate and clear-eyed insider account of being poor in the world's richest nation. She looks at how ordinary people fall or are born into the poverty trap, explains why the poor don't always behave in the way the middle classes think they should, and makes an urgent call for us all to understand and meet the challenges they face.