GROWING UP EMPTY

Twenty years after Starving in the Shadow of Plenty, Schwartz-Nobel (The Baby Swap Conspiracy, 1993) revisits the topic of hunger in America.

One in ten Americans must rely on a neighborhood food bank or soup kitchen in order to eat each day. When the author first researched hunger in 1981, 30 million Americans were living below the poverty line; that figure is now 36 million. Here, Schwartz-Nobel talks to food-bank recipients as well as policymakers. Among the interviewed are families that have been poor for generations; enlisted personnel in the US military; the newly divorced within the middle class; refugees; and illegal immigrants. While readers may be aware of the hardships facing the extremely poor, they may be less familiar with the “hidden” epidemic of hunger among US military families and the working middle class. When the author visits a Marine base in Virginia, she finds a level of poverty unknown to her. With salaries so low that they qualify for food stamps and other aid, many of the Marine families still lack enough food to make it through the month. Their situation is made even more difficult when the husband is sent on field maneuvers: There is no food allowance for wives or children, so when he’s away, the allowance is deducted from his pay, leaving the families with even less. Meanwhile, the housing situation around some bases is so dire (San Diego, for example) that families are forced to live at local campgrounds—waiting for up to five months for base housing. From the middle class, the author profiles Ruth, whose husband cleaned out their bank account and left her responsible for payments on a $350,000 loan for his private practice. Unable to sell her home or car (both were in her husband’s name), Ruth resorted to stealing scrip from her synagogue.

Though the author might romanticize the poor a bit, the profiles are uniformly affecting. Powerful reporting. (Appendixes and notes)