This award-winning documentary is a tool to help empower the extreme poor to take the first steps out of poverty. The film follows the story of four young friends who set out to live on just one dollar a day for eight weeks in rural Guatemala. They battle hunger, parasites and the realization that there are no easy answers. Yet, the generosity and strength of Rosa, a 20 year old woman, and Chino, a 12 year old boy gives them resilient hope that there...

"Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive...

Beginning in 1977, Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez produced a series of half-hour documentaries about New Orleans' challenges called Being poor in New Orleans. The programs were broadcast on WGNO-TV (Channel 26) and produced under the auspices of NOVAC, the New Orleans Video Access Center. Presenting some of the first independent TV documentaries made in New Orleans, the series was a pathbreaking look at New Orleans' problems and raised a number of...

Prologue: between roses -- Undercitizens -- Annawadi -- Asha -- Sunil -- Manju -- The business of burning -- Ghost house -- A hole she called a window -- A come-apart -- The master -- Market city -- Marquee effect -- Parrots, caught and sold -- Proper sleep -- Up and out -- Nine nights of dance -- Something shining á -- The trial -- Ice -- Black and white -- A school, a hospital, a cricket field.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote "The Underland" -- and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling go to rot ... Opal is a lot of things--orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier--but...

The year is 1883, and in New York City, it's a time of dizzying splendor, crushing poverty, and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridge nearly complete and New York in the grips of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, Anna Savard and her cousin Sophie--both graduates of the Woman's Medical School--treat the city's most vulnerable, even if doing so may put everything they've strived for in jeopardy. Anna's work has placed her in...

"In this vibrant new historical novel, the acclaimed author of The Plum Tree and What She Left Behind explores one young woman's determination to put an end to child labor in a Pennsylvania mining town... As a child, Emma Malloy left isolated Coal River, Pennsylvania, vowing never to return. Now, orphaned and penniless at nineteen, she accepts a train ticket from her aunt and uncle and travels back to the rough-hewn community. Treated like a servant...

Made in China tells one of the millions of stories of migrants from rural China who comprise the backbone of the Chinese economic miracle. It provides a human face behind the ubiquitous label "Made in China." This massive dislocation of people may well represent the largest, most rapid migration in human history. The film demonstrates how one generation of Chinese is experiencing the culture shock of an Industrial Revolution which took centuries in...

"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...

From the author of the eye-opening and controversial essay on poverty that was read by millions comes the real-life Nickel and Dimed, as Linda Tirado explains what it’s like to be working poor in America, and why poor people make the decisions they do.
We in America have certain ideas of what it means to be poor. Linda Tirado, in her signature brutally honest yet personable voice, takes all of these preconceived notions...