From the author of the eye-opening and controversial essay on poverty that was read by millions comes the real-life "Nickel and Dimed," as Linda Tirado explains what it's like to be working poor in America, and why poor people make the decisions they do.
We in America have certain ideas of what it means to be poor. Linda Tirado, in her signature brutally honest yet personable voice, takes all of these preconceived notions and smashes them to bits. She articulates not only what it is to be working poor in America (yes, you can be poor and live in a house and have a job, even two), but what poverty is truly like--on all levels. In her thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses how she went from lower-middle class, to sometimes middle class, to poor and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don't always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should."

Linda Tirado knows from experience what it is to be poor, to struggle to make ends meet. She was working two jobs - as a food-service worker in a chain restaurant and a voting rights activist at a non-profit organisation - and has two children and a husband who struggled to readjust to civilian life after his last tour in Iraq. She knows what it's like to have problems you wish you could fix, but no money, energy or resources to fix them, and no hope of getting any. In 2013, an essay on the everyday realities of poverty that Tirado wrote and posted online was read and shared around the world. In 'Hand to Mouth', she gives a searing, witty, compassionate and clear-eyed insider account of being poor in the world's richest nation.