Growing up empty : the hunger epidemic in America

Format:

Book

Title:

Growing up empty : the hunger epidemic in America

Author:

Schwartz-Nobel, Loretta.

ISBN:

9780060195632

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : HarperCollins, 2002.

Physical Description:

xii, 252 pages ; 24 cm

Contents:

Hunger and the middle class : Divorce and the downward spiral -- Hunger and the always poor : Generation after generation of urban and rural poverty -- Hunger and the military : From front lines to food lines -- Hunger and the working poor : Long hours, starvation wages -- Hunger and the homeless : America's wandering families -- Hunger, the immigrants and the refugees : Dreams of the dispossessed -- A story without an end : The ghosts of yesterday -- The last word -- Appendixes : A. The Medford Declaration ; B. Organizations.

Summary:

This sequel to "Starving in the Shadow of Plenty" dramatically portrays the hunger found in middle- and working-class families, the suddenly homeless, as well as America's military families, its refugees, and its immigrants. A call to action, this work is a study of a hidden epidemic that still remains largely unacknowledged at the highest political levels and is lauded as "a deft blend of tough investigative reporting and deep compassion ... an unforgettable exploration of public policy, its failures and its victims" by the most respected senators, members of Congress, journalists and hunger advocates in the country. In 1981, President Reagan incongruously announced to the world that there were no hungry souls in the richest nation in the world, that poverty had been virtually wiped out. But Schwartz-Nobel had found a different story in America's communities, and she laid bare the horrifying truth about hunger in the United States in her landmark work on hunger, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty. That book caused Americans to reexamine their priorities. Twenty years later, Schwartz-Nobel returned to see how things had improved--and discovered that it was all the same. As she tracked this hidden political and emotional battle, she was shocked to find that hunger is deeper and wider than she could have imagined, that it has reached epic proportions. It is running rampant through urban, rural and suburban communities, affecting blacks, whites, Asians, Christians, Jews and nonbelievers alike. And it is getting worse. The stories of the people she encountered are the core of Growing Up Empty. With a combination of skillful investigative reporting and a novelist's sympathetic and humanistic eye for detail, Loretta Schwartz-Nobel portrays an unforgettable reality of human suffering that need not exist. Among the people we come to know in these pages are the new breed of homeless born of the "Welfare to Work" program--working poor who have jobs but do not make enough to support their families; immigrants who work under horrifying conditions for little money and fewer benefits; a formerly middle-class dentist's wife abandoned by her husband, reduced to stealing in order to feed her hungry children; soldiers who fight on our front lines, while their hungry young wives and children stand in bread lines and are denied benefits and baby formula at military health clinics.

Subject(s):

Poverty -- United States.

Hunger -- United States.

Malnutrition -- United States.

Hunger -- Government policy -- United States.

Public health.

Geographic Term:

United States

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Salem Main Library	363.82 Schwartz 2002	Searching... Unknown
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	305.569 Schwartz-Nobel	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Already lauded as "a deft blend of tough investigative reporting and deep compassion . . . an unforgettable exploration of public policy, its failures and its victims" by the most respected senators, members of Congress, journalists and hunger advocates in the country, Growing Up Empty is a study of a hidden epidemic that still remains largely unacknowledged at the highest political levels. A call to action that will reenergize the national debate on the federal government's priorities, Growing Up Empty is advocacy journalism at its best.

In 1981, President Reagan incongruously announced to the world that there were no hungry souls in the richest nation in the world, that poverty had been virtually wiped out. But Schwartz-Nobel had found a different story in America's communities, and she laid bare the horrifying truth about hunger in the United States in her landmark work on hunger, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty. That book caused Americans to reexamine their priorities.

Twenty years later, Schwartz-Nobel returned to see how things had improved -- and discovered that it was all the same. As she tracked this hidden political and emotional battle, she was shocked to find that hunger is deeper and wider than she could have imagined, that it has reached epic proportions. It is running rampant through urban, rural and suburban communities, affecting blacks, whites, Asians, Christians, Jews and nonbelievers alike. And it is getting worse. The stories of the people she encountered are the core of Growing Up Empty. With a combination of skillful investigative reporting and a novelist's sympathetic and humanistic eye for detail, Loretta Schwartz-Nobel portrays an unforgettable reality of human suffering that need not exist.

Among the people we come to know in these pages are the new breed of homeless born of the "Welfare to Work" program -- working poor who have jobs but do not make enough to support their families-, immigrants who work under horrifying conditions for little money and fewer benefits; a formerly middle-class dentist's wife abandoned by her husband, reduced to stealing in order to feed her hungry children; soldiers who fight on our front lines, while their hungry young wives and children stand on bread lines and are denied benefits and baby formula at military health clinics.

In the "affecting and powerful" Growing Up Empty, Loretta Schwartz-Nobel has found the shrouded and silent victims of our public policies and brings us into their homes and hearts.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Schwartz-Nobel, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award, follows up her groundbreaking 1981 expos, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, with a new report, aiming to tell additional stories of America's hungry children-reportedly more than 12 million in number-because "[n]umbers are for the mind and stories are for the heart." Traveling coast to coast, she reaches into the hearts, minds and hopes of the disenfranchised, in particular single mothers and their children. She uncovers hunger in rural, urban and suburban neighborhoods, among the working poor and immigrants, even within the military and the middle class. The increase of hunger in America she documents as a direct result of Reagan's federal aid cutbacks in the 1980s as well as the 1996 welfare to work laws, which changed welfare and food stamp policies. These changes, coupled with high rents, income disparity and politicians rendering the problem invisible through political rhetoric, have, according to Schwartz-Nobel, exacerbated the hunger crisis. With equal parts outrage and compassion, she emphasizes the effects of hunger on the health of the entire nation and calls for awareness, action and above all a change of political heart. "This silent American epidemic is caused by people, by acts of man, not acts of God or nature." Shocking, informative and often devastating, this is a vital report on the politics of hunger and the silent Americans who are its victims. Agent, Ellen Levine. (Nov. 12) Forecast: Readers who appreciated Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed are a target audience for this account of the have-nots in America. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Twenty years after Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, Schwartz-Nobel (The Baby Swap Conspiracy, 1993) revisits the topic of hunger in America. One in ten Americans must rely on a neighborhood food bank or soup kitchen in order to eat each day. When the author first researched hunger in 1981, 30 million Americans were living below the poverty line; that figure is now 36 million. Here, Schwartz-Nobel talks to food-bank recipients as well as policymakers. Among the interviewed are families that have been poor for generations; enlisted personnel in the US military; the newly divorced within the middle class; refugees; and illegal immigrants. While readers may be aware of the hardships facing the extremely poor, they may be less familiar with the "hidden" epidemic of hunger among US military families and the working middle class. When the author visits a Marine base in Virginia, she finds a level of poverty unknown to her. With salaries so low that they qualify for food stamps and other aid, many of the Marine families still lack enough food to make it through the month. Their situation is made even more difficult when the husband is sent on field maneuvers: There is no food allowance for wives or children, so when he's away, the allowance is deducted from his pay, leaving the families with even less. Meanwhile, the housing situation around some bases is so dire (San Diego, for example) that families are forced to live at local campgrounds-waiting for up to five months for base housing. From the middle class, the author profiles Ruth, whose husband cleaned out their bank account and left her responsible for payments on a $350,000 loan for his private practice. Unable to sell her home or car (both were in her husband's name), Ruth resorted to stealing scrip from her synagogue. Though the author might romanticize the poor a bit, the profiles are uniformly affecting. Powerful reporting. (Appendixes and notes)

Library Journal Review

Schwartz-Nobel's first book, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, was an award-winning account of the extent to which extreme hunger was rampant in Philadelphia in the early Eighties. This work revisits and expands on that topic, looking at the underlying factors relating to the surge in homeless and hungry families in America since then. She pays special attention to the impact of government programs, especially the Welfare to Work Act of 1996, which dismissed the sources and conditions of poverty in the rush to reduce the numbers receiving welfare support, a theme also highlighted in Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty and Beyond, edited by Randy Albelda and Ann Withorn (South End, 2002). Along with wrenching stories of struggling, malnourished, primarily single-parent families throughout our country, Schwartz-Nobel traces the involvement of food relief networks, private and public services, and other organizations that serve admirably but are still only palliatives. She strongly argues for a responsible political will to support programs utilizing resources, existing know-how, and technologies to deal constructively with the burgeoning number of shelter- and food-insecure households (working and middle class) in America. Recommended for academic, professional, and public attention.-Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.