What is poverty? by Jo Goodwin Parker

In Ruby Payne's “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” she endeavors to provide educators with strategies to teach children from poor families, but Ruby Payne went wrong when she just took a mental image from a classroom and began analyzing on what she saw without enough evidence, her principal message was that poverty is not simply a monetary condition. She describes it to her audiences as a culture with particular rules, values, and knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next.

Imagine coming home to a house that has no warmth or food. Constantly feeling like you are in a place you can’t get out of. This is how poverty may feel to others. The expeirences from the author Jo Goodwin Parker in the story “What Is Poverty” and the McBride family from the novel “The Color Of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute To His White Mother” show that there are various effects of living in poverty that include emotional problems, adolescent rebellion, and

Bringing awareness to poverty is important, and this essay has done a fine job in doing so. Not only does it touch on poverty but also on passing judgment on individuals when we really don’t know what they could be going through. When Scheller describes how the children at school react to others who don’t have much, it causes me to think about how blessed the majority of the population in America really is and also provokes the question, what can we do to help those in need of what we like to call “basic necessities”?

The essay begins with Henry George referring to his audience as ladies and gentlemen. He then goes on to state that poverty is a crime. A crime not committed by the poor, but rather the poor as victims of the crime. He also does not wholly blame those perpetrating the crime, he also gives a kind of notion that the victim has a hand the situation he or she finds themselves in. He says the poverty is a curse that not only the poor have but is on every level of society even the rich. He says the rich also suffer because it is like the air all the community breathes. They too must breathe it.

The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader of a real problem, media misrepresentation, and to try to have the reader change the way the think, feel, and perceive the poor. She gives examples of encounters she has had that are a result of the damaging depiction and conveys to the reader why those thoughts are wrong by using her own personal experiences. She mentions that before entering college she never thought about social class. However, the comments from both other students and her professors about poverty were alarming to her. Other people viewed the poor as, “shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy” indigents. Hook opposes that stereotypical image of the poor, referring back to being taught in a “culture of poverty,” the values to be intelligent, honest, and hard-working. She uses these personal experiences to her advantage by showing she has had an inside look at poverty.

In “Changing the Face of Poverty”, the author Diana George shows different ways poverty is advertised and displayed. She disagrees with the way poverty is addressed and visually represented, in a limited way. I agree with the way she wants people to acknowledge how poverty is being misunderstood.

The author uses a seemingly endless cycle of poverty to emphasize the cage in which the characters are trapped. As Lizabeth muses over her childhood, she recalls the daily cycle of how “each morning our mother and father trudged wearily down the dirt road and around the bend, she to her domestic job, he to his daily unsuccessful quest for work.” (1). Every morning began the same way, passed the same way, and ended the same way. Lizabeth feels trapped, forced to go through the same series of events for what seems to be the rest of her life, with the same people, in the same place. When the author pairs this with the “dusty” setting of the town and the time placement of the Great Depression, it creates an effect of hopelessness for the first part of the story. This is only furthered by Lizabeth continually returning to the idea that “Poverty was the cage in which we were all trapped.” (1). Lizabeth opens the story by first giving a description of her hometown as “dusty”, remembering the poverty and hopelessness. She then continues by referring to the cage of not having enough money, and the cycle that it put them through, and ends by alluding to her future being limited to her poverty.

Jo Goodwin Parker’s essay, “What is Poverty?” is about Parker who has personally experienced rural poverty. She explains her story from childhood to adulthood. Parker’s struggles are overwhelming; look at any sentence, the evidence of her daily struggle is there. From her underwear to living arrangements, and everything in between, Parker resides in poverty. In her essay, she says to listen to the story of what poverty is. Then she talks about the different aspects of poverty. Parker talks about the lack of health conditions she and her three children suffer from. She decides to be a mother even though she has no ability to provide

In the article, “What’s So Bad about Being Poor” by Charles Murray, Murray states that “One of the great barriers to a discussion of poverty and social policy in the 1980s is that so few people who talk about poverty have ever been poor”. He discusses how, contrary to present day, in America up until the 1950s those in positions of influence and power included a sizable amount of people who had been raised “dirt-poor”. Murray states that, because of this, many Americans with their lack of exposure to such people, they develop a skewed perspective of what poverty is. On account of this, Murray challenges the reader with several thought experiments which he uses to help the reader come to certain conclusions that convey his message.

Society likes to think that the world revolves around them, people complain about small events such as, not having situations result as wanted. There are things in this world that will never stop existing; poverty is something that has always been around, for some people it is worse than others.“Flavio’s Home” by Gordon Parks, published 1990 was inspired by his autobiography, voices in the mirror. The essay gives a perfect example of what extreme poverty is like. Even though there are difficult times in life, no matter what, just keep going. “Flavio’s Home” did use ethos as a rhetorical appeal but was mainly focused in using pathos. Those who would most likely relate to this essay are people who have experienced tough situations. What Gordon showed as his main concern or issue throughout the whole story was how poorly cared for flavio and his family were.

In a absorbing way that made me cringe at times, Shipler allows these ‘invisible’ poor to narrate in their personal stories the structural, social, economic and cultural barriers that impact the families. Although I tend to disagree, Shipler admits that one

Poverty is a prevailing aspect in the novel because it shows the hardships of the characters and attracts the readers. It also gives more harsh detail into what life was like for migrant farm workers. George and Lennie, the two main characters in the novel, are very impoverished and struggle wi getting o bas necessities s such as food, water, and clothing. Instead of

Many of the poor face the issue of finding a job while struggling to survive. Rae McCormick is another one of the $2.00 a day poor in the book. She like Jennifer had been maintaining a job at Wal-Mart until she was let go for being unable to come to work one day. After being let go she ended up in the position that so many others in poverty have faced, desperately needing employment with no one wanting to hire them. Even Susan Brown had applied online for five months without hearing back from any potential employers. When it comes to the poorest people in the country, having a safe & reliable job is crucial for maintaining some order in life. Being able to find and maintain such a job on top of receiving some support from the government is the best chance some can get at lifting themselves from poverty, for awhile at

In this essay “What is Poverty?”, Jo Goodwin Parker starts of with a rhetorical question “You ask me what is poverty”, this is the opening line of the essay and it encapsulates the essay ́s purpose. Through the use of the writer ́s language she also captivates the reader with the idea of poverty and what it is by making it very concrete and real. The writer wants the reader to understand what poverty is so that they can feel like they need to help not only the writer but p!eople who struggle in that situation. !

Nelson Mandela once said, “Poverty is not natural it 's man-made.” This quote states that a person can overcome poverty if one has the desire to live a better life. In a novel called Poor People written by William T. Vollmann, the author travels around different countries and places to learn about poor people and to get a global perspective view. While interviewing different kinds of people, Vollmann would ask them one question: why are you poor? Looking at people 's answers Vollmann noticed that some of the people gave quite interesting answers. Vollmann went through a lot of situations where he just couldn 't imagine what life would be if he was ever to live like that. Another novel that has a similar poverty situation is called Let The Water Hold Me Down, written by Michael Spurgeon. Hank, the main character of the novel, experiences a tragic moment in his life. Losing his wife and daughter while drowning, this tragedy left him feeling like it’s all due to his miscarrying about them. His life becomes full of sorrow, and the only way out it was to go to Mexico to his friend’s place and restart his life over. In a new country of Mexico, this story takes place. Even though he had money, a house, and friends’ support, he still experienced lots of pressure trying to survive in Mexico. Poverty has different meanings in everyone 's lives but by reading these two novels, there are three similarities that can be made about people living in poverty.