American Hunger by Eli Saslow

American Hunger 

The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post Series 

by Eli Saslow 

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Vintage 

Politics

It's easy to see why Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He drops us into the lives of real people, real politician, real citizens living in poverty. We sit in their houses, sit at their same dinner tables, stand in long lines with them as they wait to collect free food. If your heart isn't breaking for the hungry before, it will be afterwards.

Saslow begins the series of six articles following Representative Steve Southerland from Florida, who tries to get colleagues on the same side, to find a way to feed the hungry yet help them also get working. However, he comes up against opposition on both sides of the aisle. What's fascinating is Saslow's choice. He shows 1a) Republican politicians that this is an issue worth paying attention to, 1b) Republican voters that this has potential solutions that they can be invested in, and 2) Democrats that Republican indifference is politically expedient dishonesty. As Southerland says when he tries to explain to his daughter how he cannot cross the political aisle to gather allies:

He reached two milk shake glasses to help him illustrate the problem, setting the glasses side by side on the table, their rims touching. "This is me, and this is the other guy when we get to Washington," he said. "Different ideas, different people, but we are close. We are touching. Democrat and Republican. We can do something with this.

He started to slowly pull the glasses in separate directions, ticking off reasons for the escalating divide. "Fund-raising. Campaigns," he said, moving the glasses farther apart. "Votes, strategy, rushing around, lobbyists, name-calling," he continued, spreading the glasses farther, moving his daughter;s plate to clear a path for one of them. "I have my meetings and they have theirs. I run by them. They run by me. It's all about winning, winning, winning. Winning--not fixing problems--defines all."

Then there's the Munoz family who can get more of the cheap food that fills them, but it comes at a cost. It's not healthy, and they require doctor visits for cholesterol, diabetes. Should food programs regulate what people get to eat?

The Richmond family struggles to stretch their food stamps across the whole month. They go to locations that have free food. Her children's fathers don't provide child support. They stand in line for hours just to get hand-outs that may not be there or leave something to be desired.

We had to Woonsocket and meet Pichard, a grocer whose primary customers are those on food stamps, and the Ortizes who try to live on minimum wages and food stamps.

Then Dillie Nerios is a recruiter for the food stamp program among the senior citizen set. Some had misfortune and lost their savings and now qualified for assistance, but they are reluctant to give in, seeing it as shame.

Finally, we have Rick Bible who drives a bus around the Appalachia area delivering bread to the hungry.

It's a painful journey with, as yet, no answers. Saslow sketches the scope of the problem in human detail. Give it a read.