Linda Tirado is a completely average American with two kids. She has worked as a general manager at a Burger King and until just recently worked as a night cook at Ihop and as a voting rights activist for a disability nonprofit. She also writes essays on poverty and class issues. She lives in Enoch, Utah, with her husband and children. This is her first book.
"The woman who accidentally explained poverty to the nation." The
Huffington Post
Refreshingly infuriating Tirado s raw clarity is startling. The New
York Times Book Review
[A] whipsmart woman s firsthand account of what it looks and smells
and tastes and feels like to be living in poverty brilliant and to
the point. You won t soon forget her voice or her message.
Entertainment Weekly
Funny, sarcastic, full of expletives, and most of all outrageously
honest. . . . Tirado has a way with words that s somehow both
breezy and blunt. BusinessWeek
In this riveting memoir, Tirado shares in vivid detail what it's
like to be a college graduate in the throes of poverty. Women s
Health Magazine
"Must-read...powerful." Good Housekeeping
Educative . . . Tirado s raw reportage offers solidarity for those
on the front lines of hardship yet issues a cautionary forewarning
to the critical: Poverty is a potential outcome for all of us.
Outspoken and vindictive, Tirado embodies the cyclical vortex of
today s struggle to survive. Kirkus Reviews
Gripping Articulate, insightful, and saturated with life
experience, Tirado's story is not unlike millions of others in
America, but her strong voice has the opportunity to bring that
story to new ears. Publishers Weekly, starred review
Tirado tells it like it is Enthralling and horrifying, this should
be required reading for policymakers. Booklist, starred review
In Hand to Mouth, [Tirado] uses her piercing insight, coupled with
a confessional but unrepentant voice, to open a nuanced and deeply
unsettling window into poverty in the U.S. Ms. Magazine
This book should inspire important discussion. Library Journal
The great thing about writing is that it doesn t discriminate, with
regard to race or gender or anything, class included. Being rich
and advantaged doesn t mean you won t be cruelly exposed on paper
as a pompous fraud. Conversely, if you write well, being broke and
tired won t prevent your talent and mental clarity from shining
through. Linda Tirado is just a terrific writer. There s a crucial
passage in Hand to Mouth where Linda asks why we all can t at least
just agree that someone has to do the grunt work, and that there s
dignity in that, too. With this strong and unembarrassed account of
her life on the edges of poverty Linda single-handedly re-takes
some of the dignity that has been stripped from people without
means in this singularly greed-dominated, most mean-spirited
generation in America s history. Honesty has its own power and this
is a most honest book. Everyone who thinks things are just fine in
this country should read it. Matt Taibbi, New York Times
bestselling author
"Linda Tirado tells it like it is for tens of millions of America's
low-wage workers a group that's growing even as America's
billionaires rake in ever more of the nation's total income and
wealth. The top hedge-fund partner got $3.5 billion in 2013. That
came to $1,750,000 an hour. Yet somehow we can't even raise the
minimum wage. Read what Linda has to say and you'll understand it's
not because Linda or other low-wage workers somehow deserve to be
treated this way any more than the $3.5 billion hedge-fund deserves
his pay. The game is rigged and we must un-rig it." Robert B.
Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, national bestselling author
of Aftershock
When our economy and our democracy are both broken, the story Linda
Tirado writes here is simply known as real life for millions of
Americans who are going broke every day and feel ignored by our
government. Every American deserves an equal seat at the table in
the halls of power and a wage that can put food on the dinner
table.Hand to Mouth should serve as a red flag to the politicians
in Washington and the millionaires on Wall Street, this is why we
the people are mad as hell, and we re not going to take it anymore.
Cenk Uygur, Host of The Young Turks (www.tytnetwork.com) For those
who have never had the experience, Tirado s book allows you to
hear, smell, taste, feel and visualize life as a minimum wage
worker. It also leaves you with two inescapable conclusions. First,
poverty can happen to anyone even if you are born into the middle
class. Second, you can educate people until you are blue in the
face, but as long as there are jobs that require sweeping floors,
flipping burgers, or waiting tables, we will never eliminate
poverty until everyone who works is paid a living wage. Robert
Creamer, Democracy Partners, author of Stand Up Straight: How
Progressives Can Win Hand to Mouth delivers the message to America
s poorest citizens, You are not alone, and it represents a wake-up
call to the world s wealthiest individuals that income inequality
has dangerous economic consequences for real people. It is an
insightful, heart-wrenching, and at times laugh-out-loud look into
how a third of our fellow Americans are living as poor people in an
economy that only serves the top 1%. If you can afford to purchase
this book, you will be peering into a world you likely have never
known and definitely will never forget. Tirado s words read like a
conversation over coffee, but she delivers a devastating blow to
our current economic assumptions equivalent to a modern day Oliver
Twist or The Jungle. Ryan Clayton, Executive Director, Wolf-PAC.com
I d like people to know that we re not stupid. Our decisions are
not made, nor our lives, lived in a vacuum. It s not like we re
choosing to eat utter crap instead of quinoa. It s that we ve just
worked eighteen solid hours and we still need to clean the house
and we re due back at work in eight hours and cooking takes sleep
time. It s the dopamine thing again. You know inSo I Married An Axe
Murderer, when the dad talks about how The Colonel puts an
addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it
fortnightly, smartass? That s actually true. Humans can become
addicted to the food of the poor. We aren t dumb, we know this. We
just don t have the energy to fight it and real food is expensive
and time-consuming. And we don t have the luxury of vanity; we know
it ll make us fat, but why on earth would we care? Are we going to
suddenly become less marginalized if we are a size 12 instead of
20? Is that a thing that keeps the rent paid? No? Then we don t
care."
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