This Is All I Got

“Too few journalists put the time in to allow the working poor and homeless to be heard, speaking clearly about their pitfalls and occasional triumphs, in their own words. Sandler has achieved this with skill.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

“A remarkable feat of reporting . . . Sandler’s such a keen observer, her writing so clear-eyed. . . . This Is All I Got is a testament to the bigness of the small story, to the power of intimate narratives to speak to something much larger.”—The New York Times

“Meticulously crafted and brilliantly reported, Lauren Sandler’s This Is All I Got exposes the Kafkaesque cruelties of America’s disintegrating social safety net. It is a gut punch of a narrative, an electrifying summons to policy action, and an instant classic.”—Dan-el Padilla Peralta, associate professor of classics, Princeton, and author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
 
“This Is All I Got is an absorbing portrayal of a resourceful, driven, brilliant young woman—down and out in the richest country in the world. Sandler has written a book that reads like a novel, which only makes her indictment of dwindling affordability and the public assistance bureaucracy all the more penetrating.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Disgraced
 
“A timely and empathetic act of journalism, brimming with moral conundra and posing an urgent and implicit question: How could we do better for this mother? How could we do better for this child?”—Ted Conover, director of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
 
“This is also a book you cannot put down: Lauren Sandler’s remarkable, intimate reporting and her lyrical, specific prose shine.”—Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America
 
“A stunning portrait of homelessness in America, and an unforgettable account of one mother’s quest to find shelter in the contemporary city, This is All I Got is an urgent, myth-shattering book about what happens when we refuse to deal with urban poverty. Read it, share it, don’t let the story disappear.”—Eric Klinenberg, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in Social Science at NYU and author of Palaces for the People

“[An] engaging and moving new book . . . Sandler deftly includes context, history and clearheaded explanations of the public welfare system and its dysfunctions in her detailed account of Camila’s life. . . . The ‘system,’ ostensibly there to help Camila, who became a ward of the state at age fifteen, almost becomes a character in the book. . . . Ultimately, the story of her first year of motherhood is heartbreaking, inspiring and infuriating, all at once.”—Erica Pearson, Minneapolis StarTribune