Poverty by America

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I experienced this kind of long tail depression after leaving Milwaukee. It wasn't necessarily because of the poverty I saw, it was that combined with this kind of new privilege that was all around me. So I took a job in Cambridge, Massachusetts and I think that dissonance, seeing bottles of wine served at faculty dinners that could pay my friend's rent for a month back in Milwaukee. But I realized that before reading your book, I don't think I understood what it's like on a daily basis to be poor in America. And I think I understand it better now.

RUFUS GRISCOM: Could you share with us your broader mission and how your new book, “Poverty, by America,” supports that mission?

MATTHEW DESMOND: I want to end poverty. I want to be part of the movement that’s growing around the country not to treat it but to cure it, not to reduce it but to abolish it. And I say that because we can. We can, as a country, put an end to all this scarcity and deprivation in our midst.