Poor People

By William T. Vollmann

That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann's fearless inquiry is a view of poverty unlike any previously offered.

Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and quiet resignation, allowing the poor to explain the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.

Some images that appeared in the print edition of this book are unavailable in the electronic edition due to rights reasons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9780062043795

William T. Vollmann

William T. Vollmann is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories, and a seven-volume critique of violence, Rising Up and Rising Down. He is also the author of Poor People, a worldwide examination of poverty through the eyes of the impoverished themselves; Riding Toward Everywhere, an examination of the train-hopping hobo lifestyle; and Imperial, a panoramic look at one of the poorest areas in America. He has won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and a Whiting Writers' Award. His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Spin and Granta. Vollmann lives in Sacramento, California.

Reviews for Poor People

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vollman, winner of the National Book Award for Europe Central, spent a number of years travelling the world and interviewing people who by most standards would be considered poor. He asked them the basic question: 'Why are you poor?' In this series of essays Vollmann describes the people he met and they tell their stories in their own words. Vollmann stuggles with the questions of what makes some people poor, what are the characteristics of poverty, and how various societies view their poor.This is not an academic treatise. It does not have a thesis, and does not arrive at any easy answers. It is, however, an engrossing read. More than 100 photographs of the people he interviewed, as well as other scenes of poverty, are included in the book, which makes these people all the more real. As Vollmann notes, too often we prefer to make our poor invisible.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Is this a book? It reads like the strange ruminations of a poet more than a book about the world’s poor. Vollmann spends pages and pages trying to define what it is when he talks about poverty, arguing with himself back and forth, repeating phrases over and over, speculating. I suppose I just wasn’t in the mood for this book.

[shawnd_72 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not the typical Vollmann work - non-fiction research book, sociological in nature. Writing is strong as usual but not as amazing and sheerly overwhelming as normal. At times he seems to lapse or force his writing into prosaic metaphors overly flowery and excessive, or overdone superlatives -- hard to explain but not Vollmann-esque, a little over the top. As far as the content, very strong, research is good, he makes the points clearly. A few other criticisms: the book has over 100 pictures of poor people at the end of the book, I would have like them to be serialized in chronological order as they appear in the book; as it was I had to jump around to find them. Would have loved the pictures to be in the middle. Also, since most of the pictures were grainy black and white, I am not sure why they didn't just put the pictures in as they came up--they were not repeated enough to make it worth having a separate section. Some of the tables are not well marked or referenced. Small things to be sure and shouldn't put off a reader. The concept of calculating relative daily wages across time, continents, and other variables is brilliant. I guess I just didn't like the flow. However the research is non pareil and I'm not sure you'd get that kind of field research anywhere else: the scientist would not have the heart and perspective.