San Antonio College Library

Slightly over one billion people on the planet live on a dollar a day. While the reasons for their poverty may be different across geographic regions and political circumstances, the results are much the same. Extreme poverty robs people of options in life, and the cycle is nearly impossible to break without help. While the poor often work very hard at jobs many of us would not even consider doing, not having access to basic health care and education...

One in eight Americans, approximately 37 million people, live below the poverty line although the United States is still the richest country in the world. This program looks at the various factors that contribute to this problem and what can be done to break the cycle of multigenerational poverty.

A vivid adaptation of Charles Dickens' powerful story of a young orphan boy who is released from his apprenticeship by a mysterious benefactor to be educated in London.

This is an award-winning documentary that follows four friends from the USA, who move to rural Guatemala for two months to document their lives living on less than {20}1 a day. They battle hunger, parasites, and the realization that there are no easy answers. Yet, they are inspired by the generosity and strength of people they meet in the village. Meeting Rosa, her husband Anthony, and 12-year-old Chino gives the group hope that there are still ways...

Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways in which a community survives. We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works...

Written when London arrived in England at the age of 25, this book gives a firsthand account of the poor, the menial workers, the homeless, and the perpetually unemployed among whom he lived in the slums of London's East End at the turn of the 20th century. It is a sensitive portrayal of daily life on the margins of society that culminates in a searing indictment of modern industrialism's mistreatment of workers and the poverty-stricken and its propensity...

"In personal profiles of ten families across the nation, from a Pacific Islander family in Hawaii to a homeless family in a wealthy New York City suburb, journalist Martha Shirk depicts the realities of life for children below the poverty line. She takes readers deep into the lives of families in poverty - lives sometimes marked by childhood abuse, parental loss, and long-term violence - and with each family explores their prospects for moving above...

"Because I was bad in my last life." "Because Allah has willed it." "Because the rich do nothing for the poor." "Because the poor do nothing for themselves." "Because it is my destiny." These are just some of the answers to the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asks in cities and villages around the globe: "Why are you poor?" In the tradition of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, writer Vollmann struggles to confront poverty...