Fucked at Birth: Recalibrating the American Dream for the 2020s

(Paperback)

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In Dale Maharidge's four-decade career as a writer and journalist, he has documented the downward spiral of the American working class into poverty. That is the destiny for increasing numbers of people in the 2020s and, as Maharidge discovers spray-painted inside an abandoned gas station in the California desert, it is a fate often handed down from birth. After finding that message in the ruins, Pulitzer prize-winner Maharidge sets out across the country to hear directly about the meaning behind those words from activists, leaders, and the people who will be most affected: the poor. Part raw memoir, part dogged, investigative journalism, Fucked At Birth takes the reader to the Sacramento River, where we visit a homeless encampment with historic origins reaching back to the Great Depression, and a shockingly tenacious and growing grip on its inhabitants. In LA, as the Covid crisis deepens, we face the likelihood of a mass wave of evictions that could lead to tens of thousands of households becoming homeless. And in Denver, a community organizer for BLM shares their enlightenment about economic justice-one that has only emerged thanks to the pandemic, and that unites the poor of this country, regardless of race. From Crete, Nebraska to Denison, Iowa, Youngstown, Ohio to New York City, Maharidge accesses the past to help inform the voices he encounters today. In an unprecedented time of social activism amid economic crisis, when voices everywhere are rising up for change, Maharidge's journey channels the spirit of George Orwell and James Agee, raising questions about class and privilege, while serving as a final call to action. Fucked At Birth asks readers to see themselves in the reality of American poverty, and to finally-after decades of refusal-recalibrate what we are going to do about it.

Reviews

"This is a book ripped from the headlines, from Black Lives Matter to recently thriving downtowns stripped of office workers and service workers. Those catching the brunt of it all, those with the steepest hills to climb, may have been fucked at birth. But for everyone, as Maharidge observes, the feeling of safety is folly. A sharp wake-up call to heed the new Depression and to recognize the humanity of those hit hardest." Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

Author Bio

For two decades, Dale Maharidge has been one of America's leading chroniclers of poverty. Alongside photographer Michael Williamson, his book And Their Children After Them won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1990, revisiting the places and people of depression-era America, depicted in Walker Evans's and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Also with Williamson, Maharidge wrote Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, which Bruce Springsteen has credited as an influence for songs such as "Youngstown" and "The New Timer".