Essay Excerpt

“You ask me: what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly, and with no ‘proper’ underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will tell you.

WHAT IS PROVERTY

Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot use your pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.

"… Poverty is looking into a black future. Your children won’t play with my boys. They will turn to other boys who steal to get what they want. I can already see them behind the bars of their prison instead of behind the bars of my poverty. Or they will turn to the freedom of alcohol or drugs, and find themselves enslaved. And my daughter? At best, there is for her a life like mine…”

(From "What Is Poverty?" by Jo Goodwin Parker in J. Chaffee, ed.,CriticalThinking, Thoughtful Writing,2nd ed., 347-350)