This book is a must-read for anyone who has never witnessed poverty first-hand. In this time of impending policy changes backed mostly by white people with a "blame the poor" rhetoric, very few of those people know what the "gotta do to survive" world really looks like. People who seek to know more, I highly recommend this book to you.

My father used to always say that it is the stress that kills us. Looks like he might have been right. This book is an emotional read, moving between moments of hope and moments of "I'm screwed."

"In all cities there are self-contained groups that exist without intercommunication, small worlds within a greater world that lead their lives, their members dependent upon one another for companionship, as though they inhabited islands separated from each other by an unnavigable strait."

The release of this book in 1994 was synchronized with the state of my soul that same year. I was 23 years old. Marriage was the buzzword of the day and I was struggling with my disdain for an oppressive institution. This book told me I wasn't crazy, empowering me to be me. A must read for all.

"So we stumble forward in hopeful chaos, trusting that the light on the horizon is the dawn and not the twilight" ... "Much of the time we behave like a troop of apes quarreling over a fruit tree."