The Missouri Reader Vol. 36, Issue 1 | Page 11

poor town‖ could have been written ―after many years
of neglectful policies and the lack of work, the
poverty rates in the barrio increased.‖ Embedded in
the text is the implicit assumption that the migration
of people to the barrio resulted in the poverty. In
reality, migration was forced to San Jose because
people‘s economic livelihoods were destroyed
(Hellinger & Ellner, 2004). In the book, the people
who were forced to migrate are responsible for the
town becoming poor, versus the policies that forced
them to migrate.
The All I’ll Ever Want for Christmas Doll, written by
McKissack (2007), portrays an African American
family living in the 1930‘s during the Depression.
One of the children, Nella, longs for a Baby Betty doll
for Christmas. Her sister scolds her and reminds her
of the economic times they are living in. She says,
―We‘re in a Depression! Why you wishin‘ for
somethin‘ you ain‘ never gon‘ get?‖ Striking about this
statement is the direct commentary from a child about
the political economy of their times. However,
despite the direct reference to the economic times,
the word ―depression‖ is a nominalization that turns
verbs and actions into nouns, without agents.

Representation of Labor
The majority of those who live in poverty are
working (Ehrenreich, 2001; hooks, 2000). They
receive low wages and live through bouts of
unemployment. The books represent this reality. All
of the books represent adults who are working but in
half of the books the kinds of jobs are ambiguous.
With that said, all of the books represent ―the
deserving poor‖ (Will, 1993). That is, they are all
working, trying to get ahead, do not question their
working conditions and maintain their status as good
citizens.
The kinds of work and jobs illustrated in the
books provide insight into how social class and
poverty are represented alongside of work
opportunities. All of the books represent the major
characters as workers, not owners or bosses. The
division and struggle between those who own the
modes of production and those who use their labor to

carry out the means of production is missing in all of
the books. Perhaps this is because the owners
represented in the books are not the owners where
the main characters in the books work. Only in The
Woman in the Cardboard Box is there a relationship
present between relations of owning and poverty. In
this book, the owner of the café is upset that Dorrie is
sleeping in a cardboard box in front of his store
because it is bad for business. He is portrayed as
privileging ―profit over people‖ (Chomsky &
McChesney, 2003). In Going Home, there is a link
between the labor manager and the family, but it is
brief and the labor manager is not the owner of the
fields. In five of the ten books, the parents of the main
characters have jobs but the kinds of jobs are
ambiguous, perhaps symbolizing how the work that
people living in poverty do is often rendered invisible.
Interesting to note, divisions between classes are
represented but class struggle is invisible. In Tight
Times, the loss of the father‘s job remains a private
sphere matter. In Spuds, a divide exists between the
farm owner and the family living in poverty. When
the children take the left over potatoes from his fields
and are forced to return them under the direction of
their mother, the farmer laughs and tells them they
can help him clean the rocks out of his field next year.
Even though he acknowledges they are hungry, he
does not offer to give them potatoes or share the land
for growing their own food. In a society where there
is a legacy of land ownership, class and race divides,
questions of wants and needs raise to the surface and
could be explored in the classroom (Shapiro, 2004).
Working Conditions. Only in four books do we
hear anything about working conditions. Two of the
books focus on the experience of Mexican Americans
as farm laborers and the kinds of hard physical labor
that they endure in this job. In Going Home and
Amelia’s Road we hear about bad working conditions as
described through the physical pain of the characters.
In Spuds we hear how tired the mother is from
working. In The Rag Coat the father gets miner‘s
cough and dies from his work in the coal mine. This is
the only book that deals with health conditions
associated with work.

©The Missouri Reader, 36 (1) p. 11