In a land of seemingly endless plenty, Growing Up Poor offers a startling and beautiful collection of stories, poems, and essays about growing up without. Searing in their candor, understated, and often unexpectedly moving, the selections range from a young girl’s story of growing up in New York’s slums at the turn of the twentieth century, to a southern family’s struggles during the Depression, to contemporary stories of rural and urban poverty by some of our foremost authors.

Thematically organized into four sections-on the material circumstances of poverty, denigration at the hands of others, the working poor, and moments of resolve and resiliency-the book combines the work of experienced authors, many writing autobiographically about their first-hand experience of poverty, with that of students and other contemporary writers.

Edited and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist Robert Coles, Growing Up Poor gives eloquent voice to those judged not by who they are, but by what they lack.