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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weston, Kath, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poor--United States.

Poor.

Poverty--United States.

Poverty.

United States--Description and travel.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (286 p.)

Place of Publication:

Boston : Beacon Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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 . ..

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-262).

ISBN:

0-8070-9652-0

OCLC:

503445954