Summary Of Still Hungry In America By Edelman

When asked about the hunger problems in America one would imagine a homeless person asking and begging for food in the streets. However, what we fail to understand is that hunger is closer to us than what we think. A fellow co-worker or perhaps even the next door neighbor may be an example of someone who suffers from food insecurity. Food insecurity is when a person does not know when or where the next meal will come from. Food insecurity is most likely to develop in food deserts, a place where there is little to no fruits, vegetables and whole healthy foods. The documentary, A Place At The Table, is attempting to shed light on the argument that many Americans suffer from food insecurity because of low income and as result those individuals face various complications.

Here is food for thought: Is hunger affecting your community? Most of us wake up every day, eat breakfast, go through our usual work routine just to come home and eat dinner without a single thought of anything different. Some of us, however, wake up not knowing when or where our next meal will come. Solano County is not excluded in this situation. Behind the cities and landscapes, there is an abundance of people who cannot afford a sufficient meals for themselves. Impoverished families are facing devastating health conditions since their low wages cannot support themselves to live or eat. Even in the small agricultural land of Solano County, hunger is a severe problem that should not be overlooked.

America is often viewed as the country of wealth and excess, especially when it comes to food. Due to high obesity rates throughout the country, oftentimes people from other nations believe that there is no such thing as hunger in America. Sadly, this is just not true. Millions of children and families in America are either hungry or starving, and this isn’t a new development. Hunger has been prevalent in the lives of many Americans throughout history. From the early days of the first pilgrims to the Great Depression, American adults and children have known physical hunger. In the novel Black Boy by Richard Wright, Richard feels this common American hunger, but he also feels deeper hungers that influence him on a greater level. Throughout his

Linda Tirado, author of Hand to Mouth Living in Bootstrap America, tells her story of what it’s like to be working poor in America, as well as what poverty is truly like on many levels. With a thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses her journey from lower class, to sometimes middle class, to poor, and everything in between. Throughout the read, Tirado goes on to reveal why poor people make the decisions they do in a very powerful way.

Poverty is a main part of life for many people in the world, more importantly the United States. Jeanette Walls shows how big of a problem poverty is in her memoir “The Glass Castle”, with her stories of how she grew up and her family’s struggles. How her family was treated along with what the people living around them found important clearly shows their economical class. The problem of food scarcity, or not having the bare necessities are some of poverty’s main problems. In “The Glass Castle”, the issues of poverty are displayed through not having the basic necessities, not being able to provide for children, and how there is not always enough food to feed everyone in the family.

Author Bryan Stevenson (2014) writes, “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned”(p.18). According to the non-profit, Feeding America (2016), in 2015, 43.1 million, or 13.5%, of people in the United States were impoverished. Poverty is a vicious cycle, trapping people and families for generations. The inability to escape poverty is due in part to difficult class mobility in the U.S. but also because certain factors reinforce the idea and state of poverty. Bryan Stevenson’s bestseller Just Mercy, Lindsey Cook’s article “U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal”, Michelle Alexander’s excerpt “The Lockdown”, and Sarah Smarsh’s “Poor Teeth” all explore the idea of poverty and the systems that sustain it. While all four readings focus on poverty differently and explore it using different techniques, they all share similar big picture ideas about how poverty is fortified through systematic, societal, and psychological efforts.

First, I would like to give my opinion of whether this book was worthwhile at the beginning of this book review. Because I believe this is one of the most moving books written today about the problem of hunger in America. I also believe that this book should be required reading for every "elected official" who has the power to end the needless tragedy of hunger in America. This is a very well-written, well-researched book based on real people with real stories not just about numbers, trends, stats, or theories.

In Janet Poppendieck's “Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger To Inequality” she argues that America puts excessive focus upon hunger issues among the poor when there are many other important issues that go unnoticed. Poppendieck believes that it is time to find a way to shift the discourse from undernutrition to unfairness, from hunger to inequality. In today's society, there are many food banks, food drives, soup kitchens, etc. Food is extremely abundant in America, therefore Poppendieck's statement is proven true when she states that there is too much focus on hunger. Throughout this text, she strongly supports her claims about hunger, equality, and poverty in general.

Poverty in the United States today has many faces. There’s the pleading face of a middle-aged man on a city street holding up a sign that says “Hungry, Need Help.” There’s the anxious face of a young child in a schoolroom somewhere, whose only real meal today will be a free school lunch. There’s the sad face of a single mother who doesn’t have enough money to buy clothes for her children. And there’s the frustrated face of a young man working at a minimum-wage job who can't afford to pay his rent.

Hunger in America is very important and dangerous. Hunger means that people are in need of

The topic of poverty is America has been both a huge focus and a sore subject for many. There are differing opinions on how to handle our growing population of people below the poverty line, with some saying the solution is the good old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” rhetoric to others saying impoverished people have children and refuse to work just to get bigger checks from their states.

In her book, titled, Growing Up Empty, award winning public service journalist, speaker and author of eight books—Loretta Schwartz-Nobel brilliantly employs all four of these ideas. In her book, Schwartz-Noble takes her reader on a behind the scenes look at an impoverish America. Her book chronicles true life stories of some of these poverty stricken individuals living among us. It portrays some of the events that led up to forcing one in ten families to depend on food banks and soup kitchens as their only means of feeding their children. It exposes the “men who knew about hunger but lied” and those who “learned about hunger but voted for economy at the expense of the hungry poor”. This book was written, according to the

Overall, this paper is about how poverty is very prominent in our society, and we need to learn more about it. We need to increase aid to low- income families because they cannot support

The author describes various solutions to fighting poverty across the U.S as well as how poverty can affect individuals. The authors research focuses on the life of Tianna Gaines- Turner and her husband in that even though they both work. It's not enough to cover the expenses they are having to do for themselves and children. And since they can’t sustain the family they can get food benefits such as SNAP. Furthermore, the author also mentions some solutions to fighting poverty. Like increasing federal aid, federal housing programs, as well as individuals that have businesses can help to ease poverty in the U.S.

While it has proven to be difficult to end poverty in America, Peter Edelman is optimistic. In his book So Rich, So Poor Edelman makes a call to action. There are four prominent ideas that underpin Edelman’s reasoning throughout the book: (1) More people must understand why poverty is still so prevalent in America; (2) extreme poverty must be taken into consideration as a shocking 6 million Americans’ sole income was food stamps in 2011. This fact alone creates a sense of urgency that drives Edelman; (3) increasing income inequality should be treated as a moral issue; and (4) bold political action will be required if substantive progress will be made in alleviating poverty.