What is poverty’ by Jo Goodwin Parker

    This article is an account of an Anonymous American woman who is taking care of her three children and runs her household with a monthly allowance of seventy two dollars. She describes their sufferance from her perspective while refusing for any pity from the readers. I find this article depicting an angry and a frustrated woman who is taking out her bottled up frustration she may have never mention otherwise and find this article to be straight forward and imposing but i would like to point out how this article sounds more pessimistic than realistic. 
     Her life is highlighted in graphic details about their routine pointing out luxuries that not even readers may have realized are luxuries to the financially disadvantaged. Almost all the paragraphs start with either a smile or a metaphor with the word poverty which holds the morose mood of the passage. The woman is shown to be repressed who conformed to her situation like quitting school in peer pressure and assumes her children will have similarly dark future like her. Viewing poverty as something chronic and unchangeable with a bleak future shows learned helplessness and pessimism. I believe poverty is never a last stop once you reach there.