Hand to mouth : living in bootstrap America / Linda Tirado.

Originally published: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [2014].

Foreword / Barbara Ehrenreich -- It takes money to make money -- You get what you pay for -- You can't pay a doctor in chickens anymore -- I'm not angry so much as I'm really tired -- I've got way bigger problems than a spinach salad can solve -- This part is about sex -- We do not have babies for welfare money -- Poverty is fucking expensive -- Being poor isn't a crime, it just feels like it -- An open letter to rich people.

As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don't get heard from much. Now they have a voice. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it's like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don't they get better jobs? Why don't they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don't they borrow from their parents? Tirado discusses openly how she went from lower-middle class to sometimes middle class to poor, and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don't always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should."