A review by waterbear0821
Uplift and Empower: A Guide To Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation by Danielle Hawa Tarigha

informative reflective slow-paced

2.75

This was not a good book. It seems like it was a great thesis, though. The ideas are all over the place and the author tries to cover way too much. The lit review, which is what this is, never comes together into coherent conclusions or, if conclusions are made at all, they’re contradictory conclusions. I’m not gonna give a ton of examples because it made my review too long, but the biggest eye roll for me was the book-long sermon about how “sympathetic giving” does more harm than good and that we should instead focus on giving people the ability to have meaningful work, but one of the very first examples the author lifts up as a paragon of this strategy is some people who went to a disaster-stricken region and instead of giving people money or supplies they…taught them to make bracelets 🥴 Friend, why do you think people bought bracelets? Spoiler alert: it was sympathy. Did anyone need bracelets? Was this a valuable skill that improved the community? How was that better than just giving them the money they made selling bracelets? 🫠

Having said all that, by FAR my favorite  part was about Liberia. The author’s family comes from Liberia and the history, politics, social ramifications, and interviews about Liberia could have been a whole book and a much better one than this was. Maybe it’s partly because I know a lot less about Liberia than about poverty in America, but I really enjoyed that part and wish it had been much longer and more detailed.  

Also I did listen to the audiobook and it is very, very rough. Volume is inconsistent and there are very distracting audio cuts. Not downgrading for that but heads up that it’s challenging to understand at times.