Someplace Like America

April 4, 2011
The Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author and photographer team Maharidge and Williamson continue their heartfelt chronicle of the travails facing America's poor and homeless in this follow-up to the 1995 Journey to Nowhere. Presenting new stories from today's "Great Depression" and updating their accounts of those impoverished during the recession of the '80s and the supposed boom years of the '90s, this book evokes the Depression-era collaboration of Walker Evans and James Agee. Maharidge delves into causes: the pernicious effects of NAFTA; the hollowing-out of the Rust Belt of the Midwest through deindustrialization; a deeply unbalanced tax system in which the middle classes pay a higher proportion of their income than the wealthy, even in the face of ever-skyrocketing pay for CEOs. However, at the core of the narrative are the individuals who've found themselves dispossessed, hopping freight trains to look for work, waiting in food bank lines, huddling in shanties hand-built from scraps and billboard tarps, and mourning the closings of the steel mills where they once worked. Williamson's gritty photographsâof blind storefronts, abandoned lots choked with weeds, faces lined with dirt and worry, stalwart families, and squatters hunched over meager campfiresâare an equally eloquent testimonial.