If You Came This Way: A Journey Through the Lives of the Underclass - Hardcover

When the acclaimed author of Where Is Nicaragua? went in search of America's growing underclass--the persistent poor--he discovered a frighteningly large segment of the population for whom our cherished notions of equal opportunity and freedom for all are nothing but a mockery. Told in starkly human terms, courageous and compassionate, If You Came This Way is Peter Davis's shattering sojourn among our hopelessly impoverished fellow Americans ...young and old, victims and vagabonds, the struggling unemployed and the simply unemployable. Their strengths and weaknesses, fears and anxieties, needs and desires will surprise and haunt you. Praise for Peter Davis's. Where Is Nicaragua? "This superb book is not only the definitive news about Nicaragua; it makes the ongoing news finally understandable. It is as elegantly written as V. S. Naipul's The Loss of El Dorado. Mr. Davis does not make his case in the manner of the polemicist; he convinces us morally in the manner of a good novelist." --John Irving. "Stunning piece of firsthand reportage...he has captured the nuance, the ambiguity, the irony and the outright comedy of life among the Sandinistas and the contras." --J. Anthony Lukas. "A brilliant examination of the process of revolution in Central America by a most gifted writer. Wonderfully written, it is filled with pleasures and insights. --Robert Stone.

if you came this way When Peter Davis was mugged at gunpoint in front of his own apartment building, it began a process that would take him on a shattering journey across an America most of us have never seen. Searching tot a "generic desperado ? as a way to restore my own sense of who i am in the society that surrounds me," the award-winning author and filmmaker combed the desolate landscape of America?s underclass. In a world of overwhelming indigence and stagnation, Peter Davis came to a shocking realization: the underclass "are our enemies, and they know it ? at no time in this century have the poor been our enemies to the extent they are now." In If You Came This Way, Peter Davis challenges long-held perceptions about the poor in America and, in the process, many of his?and our?fundamental and cherished beliefs about American society. This powerful, provocative, and intensely personal book from the acclaimed author of Where Is Nicaragua? and Hometown is a blistering examination of life below the poverty line in the richest nation in the world. Who are the underclass? How did they arrive at these circumstances? Can anything be done to help?and if not, how will that affect the future of our society? These are the questions that drove Peter Davis from coast to coast and border to border, stopping at shellers and soup kitchens, hanging out in parks and on the streets, getting to know "our helpless own." At a decaying housing project in San Antonio, Davis is abruptly confronted by an articulate young mother of three, whose flashing eyes reflect her anger toward politicians and the welfare system ("Help me or don?t preach to me!"). On Chicago?s South Side, an equally articulate, fiercely protective young mother tells the parable of the two tables, a chilling vision of drug dealers preying on young children. For the children of the underclass, mere survival is often a harrowing challenge. In a downtown Los Angeles hospital, a weeks-old infant shivers through the effects of in vitro exposure to his prostitute mother?s cocaine abuse. Across the country, in Bangor, Maine, a pair of teenagers hang out in a local park. One is affectionately known to friends as "Psycho"; his father punished him by imprisoning him in a well?for nine endless days and nights. His buddy, Bull, left home at age eleven, also fleeing his father?s beatings?the same father who introduced him to liquor at age nine. Peter Davis writes with a brilliant balance of objectivity, outrage, and compassion. His vivid prose creates stark, indelible images, while bringing insight and a clear-eyed perspective to what could easily become America?s most explosive problem.