Of all the nonfiction books I’ve read, Evicted is one of my favorites. I recognize that it’s easy to swoon over a text that ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize, but it’s well deserved. Specifically, it’s a great example of an academic thesis braided with gritty, everyday, human perspective. Matthew Desmond didn’t tell us about eviction and housing statistics in Milwaukee, well, he did, but, as an ethnographer, he paired them with the stories of those on all sides of real estate. That what’s so remarkable about the book, Evicted is a masterful text that offers fact-based, archival insight on the history of housing with a hands-on, I was in the room when it happened, perspective of its life-altering inequality.
Desmond reports on something everyone in the world has a connection to: housing. Whether you’re privileged to never have had to think about losing it or, oppositely, understand the deep hardships associated with the lack thereof, you have a connection to it. This books gives a voice to the landlords, tenants, court systems, government funded programs, and many of the other players involved with a system that significantly disadvantages so many. Unlike previous texts, it puts the gross, multiplying effects of poverty in the spotlight and that painful image sticks with the reader long after the last page.
Whenever I’m speaking with someone about must-read books, this is the one I recommend.
Favorite Quotes: “It is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”
“If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.” pg 98
“By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don’t want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.” pg 310
About the Author: Matthew Desmond is a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University where he also oversees The Eviction Lab. He is a contributing writer to The New York Times and in 2015 received the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Daniel Dickey