In “What’s So Bad About Being Poor?”, Deborah M. Foster delivers a raw and powerful memoir that serves as both personal testimony and pointed rebuttal to conservative poverty “experts” like Charles Murray. The book opens with Foster’s encounter with Murray’s provocative essay of the same title while in college – a moment that redirected her academic path from studying psychology to social policy and challenging those who minimize poverty’s devastating impacts.
Foster’s memoir looks back on her family’s struggles with mental illness, religious fundamentalism, and grinding poverty in 1970s Iowa and Wisconsin. She recalls her father’s schizoaffective disorder and mother’s psychological issues, and how they created familial chaos that was amplified by their desperate financial circumstances. The author vividly recalls sleeping in sleeping bags on empty apartment floors, enduring winters without adequate heat, and the shame of having to explain to classmates why she couldn’t participate in normal childhood activities.
The book’s power lies in Foster’s ability to connect her lived experiences to broader policy failures. She methodically dismantles Murray’s arguments by showing how structural barriers – not personal failings – so often keep families trapped in poverty. Her account of trying to access healthcare with Medicaid, navigate the complexities of food stamps, and maintain dignity while accepting charity demonstrates how safety net programs, while vital, often fail to address poverty’s psychological toll.
Foster’s writing is remarkably clear-eyed given the traumatic experiences she describes. She resists both self-pity and neat redemption narratives, instead focusing on documenting how poverty shapes children’s development and family dynamics. Her academic training and PhD adds analytical depth without dampening the memoir’s emotional impact.
The book’s examination of religious fundamentalism’s appeal to the poor is another insightful element of this memoir. Foster shows how economic instability made her parents susceptible to fringe beliefs and cult-like groups promising certainty in an uncertain world. Their brief involvement with a polygamist Mormon sect illustrates how desperation can drive people to embrace extreme ideologies.
While Foster successfully earned her PhD and escaped poverty, she emphasizes that individual achievement narratives obscure poverty’s systemic nature. Her family’s story reveals how mental illness, lack of affordable healthcare, inadequate schools, and vanishing manufacturing jobs create nearly insurmountable barriers for many poor families. Foster’s dual perspective as both survivor and scholar allows her to bridge the gap between policy debates and poverty’s day-to-day reality. At a time when inequality continues to grow and class divisions deepen, Foster’s call to truly see and understand poor families’ struggles is more urgent than ever.
The result is a vital contribution to discussions about poverty in America – one that centers the voices of poor people themselves rather than outside “experts.” Foster’s unflinching account demands that we confront poverty’s true human costs and our collective responsibility to address them.
