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Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America
Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America -- Posted by tigerlilly@privacy.net.org.com on 05-27-05 21:20
Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America
By Loretta Schwartz-Noble
Book Review By David Beckmann
A U.S. Marine, peeking suspiciously from behind the front door of a run-down
military house, surrenders his pride long enough to accept a bag of free food to
feed his wife and infant daughter, who haven't eaten for three days. It's the
end of the month, there's no money in the house and the food purchased by food
stamps and from WIC has run out. By telling such stories, Loretta Schwartz-Nobel
puts a familiar face on the millions of hungry people vulnerable to changes in
our nation's public policy. Her stories illustrate what hunger advocates have
been saying for years-that "hunger in America is far too vast to be contained by
charity alone that as federal aid is slashed, suffering and hunger increase
among us and that as federal aid increases, hunger proportionately decreases."
Hunger is not a new topic for Schwartz-Noble, an award-winning journalist and
author. When her first article on hunger appeared in Philadelphia magazine in
1974, the sophisticated network of food banks and food distribution charities we
now take for granted didn't exist. By the time her acclaimed book Starving in
the Shadow of Plenty was published in 1981, hunger had come to the forefront of
public awareness and both corporate and private-sector groups were organizing to
expand charitable feeding programs. Now, despite the Herculean efforts of food
banks, churches and charities, the number of hungry people in America is
actually higher than when Schwartz-Noble first began writing.
These are grim times for hungry people. The ebbing tide of the economy has
lowered all boats. It has especially affected the 33.6 million people in the
U.S. more than one-third of them children living in food-insecure households,
where access to food is "limited or uncertain." In the coming weeks Congress
will make changes to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program,
commonly known as welfare. Hailed by some as a success and condemned by others
as a blow to our nation's poor, the landmark legislation that changed welfare
from an entitlement program to a block grant in 1996 is now being reconsidered.
The House has passed a bill that would add work requirements for welfare
recipients without providing the requisite child care funding. It would also
authorize President Bush to approve state proposals to redesign TANF, food
stamps, housing and job training programs. At a time when states are in
financial crises, this flexibility would certainly shift money away from hungry
and poor people. The Bush administration is also proposing to weaken Medicaid,
the Earned Income Tax Credit and Head Start, and the president's proposal for
yet another huge tax cut will force deeper cuts in years ahead.
In Growing Up Empty Schwartz-Noble lends an impassioned and provocative voice to
the millions of people suffering from hunger of epidemic proportions in the
world's most prosperous country, people whose stories are often denied or
discredited. By giving the silenced hungry in America a place at the table,
Schwartz- Noble shatters stereotypes about who they are and why they are hungry.
Of the 23.3 million people who requested assistance from America's Second
Harvest agencies in 2001, forty percent were working adults.
From coast to coast, from rural communities to suburbia to the inner city, the
hidden stories of hunger uncovered in Growing Up Empty are both familiar and yet
somehow always fresh in their ability to evoke the helplessness and hope of
people who struggle to find daily bread. Cautious of having "risked
sentimentality," Schwartz- Noble presents hungry people and their difficult
choices with dignity, yet without bowdlerization or censure. This remarkable
collection of stories, the fruit of Schwartz- Nobel's personal investigation, is
sandwiched between a brief history of public awareness about hunger in America
and an analysis of the root causes of hunger. Attributing the hunger epidemic to
the enormous cuts in nutrition programs in the 1980s, Schwartz-Nobel accurately
chronicles policy-makers' denial of hunger in the U.S. and their failure to fund
programs that address the needs of hungry people. Unfortunately, when it comes
to welfare, the current political rhetoric of compassion appears to be as empty
as the refrigerators of the people whose stories Schwartz- Nobel tells so
compellingly. Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America
By Loretta Schwartz-Noble
Book Review By David Beckmann
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