Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America: Loretta Schwartz-nobel
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Schwartz-Nobel, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award, follows up her groundbreaking 1981 expos‚, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, with a new report, aiming to tell additional stories of America’s hungry children-reportedly more than 12 million in number-because “[n]umbers are for the mind and stories are for the heart.” Traveling coast to coast, she reaches into the hearts, minds and hopes of the disenfranchised, in particular single mothers and their children. She uncovers hunger in rural, urban and suburban neighborhoods, among the working poor and immigrants, even within the military and the middle class. The increase of hunger in America she documents as a direct result of Reagan’s federal aid cutbacks in the 1980s as well as the 1996 welfare to work laws, which changed welfare and food stamp policies. These changes, coupled with high rents, income disparity and politicians rendering the problem invisible through political rhetoric, have, according to Schwartz-Nobel, exacerbated the hunger crisis. With equal parts outrage and compassion, she emphasizes the effects of hunger on the health of the entire nation and calls for awareness, action and above all a change of political heart. “This silent American epidemic is caused by people, by acts of man, not acts of God or nature.” Shocking, informative and often devastating, this is a vital report on the politics of hunger and the silent Americans who are its victims.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Schwartz-Nobel’s first book, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, was an award-winning account of the extent to which extreme hunger was rampant in Philadelphia in the early Eighties. This work revisits and expands on that topic, looking at the underlying factors relating to the surge in homeless and hungry families in America since then. She pays special attention to the impact of government programs, especially the Welfare to Work Act of 1996, which dismissed the sources and conditions of poverty in the rush to reduce the numbers receiving welfare support, a theme also highlighted in Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty and Beyond, edited by Randy Albelda and Ann Withorn (South End, 2002). Along with wrenching stories of struggling, malnourished, primarily single-parent families throughout our country, Schwartz-Nobel traces the involvement of food relief networks, private and public services, and other organizations that serve admirably but are still only palliatives. She strongly argues for a responsible political will to support programs utilizing resources, existing know-how, and technologies to deal constructively with the burgeoning number of shelter- and food-insecure households (working and middle class) in America. Recommended for academic, professional, and public attention.
Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
