Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

Eksmitowani. Nędza i zyski w jednym z amerykańskich miast by Matthew Desmond

20 reviews

cady_sass's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

A bleak and brutal look at the reality of poverty in America through the eyes of a number of Milwaukee residents constantly teetering the edge of homelessness. It’s easy to get lost in these peoples stories and forget this is nonfiction, for many who have never seen or experienced or even imagined poverty this reads like fiction. The endless cycle created by the American government is a tough pill to swallow. Imagining a woman choosing to tolerate physical abuse rather than call the police and risk being evicted for being a problem tenant? That’s real and that’s horrific. And that’s just one of many, many stories told here. This is another book that I wish everyone could be compelled to read, there is a deeper understanding here and the empathy that comes with that understanding is critical to making progressive change. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Medical content, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Classism

larbster90's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

One of the best non-fiction books I've read. Tells the story of eviction not just with numbers, but with human stories. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Death, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

junefish's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Racial slurs, and Racism

Moderate: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal death, Cursing, Drug use, Sexism, and Xenophobia

Minor: Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Police brutality, Pregnancy, and Toxic friendship

kaddyren's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Very informative and has memorable characters, but would probably not read again any time soon. Lots of triggering subjects. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual violence, and Abandonment

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Toxic relationship and Toxic friendship

edie_reads's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Racial slurs, and Racism

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Mental illness, Racism, Sexism, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol

Minor: Animal death, Cursing, Mental illness, Excrement, and Pregnancy

julesapollo's review against another edition

dark relaxing fast-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Toxic friendship

mongoosenamedt's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Racism

Moderate: Domestic abuse and Drug use

katsudonburi's review against another edition

challenging informative sad slow-paced

5.0

A brutal and incredibly upsetting look at poverty and the damage eviction does to people and their families; what keeps it from reading as trauma porn is the author's deep commitment to the humanity of his subjects and constant examination of the systems that have not so much failed them as been designed to exploit them. 

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Police brutality

Minor: Animal death, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, and Forced institutionalization

sherbertwells's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

“We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.” (5)

Evicted by Matthew Desmond challenged my biases.

Not my biases about poverty; it pretty much confirmed my perspective there. Landlords buy properties, neglect them and take advantage of racialized poverty to fatten their own pockets. Poor women, especially single mothers, face a nigh-impossible struggle to build a stable home. Neighborhoods and the availability of housing can improve or destabilize a person’s life.

I believed these things before reading Evicted and Desmond’s extensive footnotes didn’t contradict them. The bias that Evicted overturned was a subtle parasite that I didn’t know had made a home in my system: the bias against sociologists.

As the child of an urban historian (one who studies Milwaukee, no less), I was raised believing in the gaslamp of context, the noble, futile quest through years of obfuscation and the sacred darkness of the unknowable. Compared to valiant historians, sociologists seemed to have it easy. If they wanted to do research, they could just step outside and interview their neighbors! 

But Desmond’s solid storytelling opened my eyes to the potential of a good sociologist, which he is. Specifically, he’s an ethnologist, one whose front-line research forms the backbone of Evicted. The book follows several families—some living in a trailer park on Milwaukee’s white South Side, others living in predominately-black North Side slums—face eviction during the winter of 2008, when America’s housing crisis led to widespread displacement among low-income households. Their individual journeys paint a portrait of poverty in the 21st century, humanizing a group that wealthy and middle-class readers might otherwise demonize, victimize or otherwise simply ignore.

“People like Larraine lived with so many compounded limitations that it was difficult to imagine the amount of good behavior or self-control that would allow them to lift themselves out of poverty. The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to” (219).

While the stories of renters like Arleen, Scott and Larraine provide remarkable testimony on the experiences of being poor in America, Desmond’s scholarship is what makes Evicted convincing. The footnotes go on for 79 pages—25% of the length of the actual story—and provide illuminating explanations as well as citations for everything from Carol Stack’s All Our Kin to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Desmond strikes an efficient balance between dramatizing his subjects and demonstrating his scholarly credentials.

But there’s still something missing from Desmond’s work, something whose absence ultimately hurts his argument: history. Desmond insists that Evicted “tells an American story” because its setting is indicative of the condition of many major American cities (5). But in Milwaukee history, city government has played a larger-than-average role in shaping residents' living situations. Desmond concedes that “Milwaukee used to be flush with good jobs” in the early 20th century, but neglects to mention that these conditions were created by a string of Socialist mayors who encouraged labor unions, public works and welfare programs, and who faded from the spotlight in the 1960s as white working-class voters felt threatened by Milwaukee’s growing African-American population. A deeper examination of the history of segregation in Milwaukee would also aid Desmond’s arguments about the differences between white and black renters’ experiences. But it’s also possible that I have not completely overcome my bias against sociologists.

Evicted was my first foray into sociological nonfiction, as I imagine that it was for many of the 66,954 readers who left ratings of the book on Goodreads. It probably won’t be my last. Unlike many ethnologists, Desmond chooses to remove himself from the central narrative; an afterword explains his relationships to the subjects and his role in the events of the story. When documenting an issue as large as America’s problems with urban housing, he claims, “‘I’ don’t matter” (335).

Perhaps that’s a lesson I need to take to heart. Evicted is a good book with a strong message about a big problem, and if it changes American housing for the better, I would feel nothing but pride.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Physical abuse

Minor: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, and Grief

beetsnotbombs's review against another edition

emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Mental illness, Sexual content, and Grief

Minor: Trafficking