In the United States, 42 million women live at or below the poverty line, and 230 million children depend on them for support. Many, much like Katrina Gilbert, are the primary breadwinners of the family and rely on little assistance from others to make ends meet. Paycheck to Paycheck is the documentation of a slice of Katrina’s life, raising awareness of the struggles of women in her financial situation.
Married at nineteen, Katrina Gilbert had three children with husband Jeremy. Much of the money the couple had was funneled into Jeremy’s addiction to medication, and when they split there was little to pay for a divorce. Separated, and with Jeremy unemployed, Katrina works as a nurse’s assistant in a home for the elderly. Her job is exhausting
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While both are pleasant things on which to spend money, as someone who consistently struggles financially she should have the foresight to begin saving money so she does not have to live paycheck to paycheck for the rest of her life. Another questionable use of her money is when she goes to a hair salon to get her …show more content…
While she does deserve to spend money on herself, for someone struggling at the poverty line there are wiser investments of one’s finances.
Katrina is just one of the millions of women who strains to support herself and her children. While moving in with Chris, having Jeremy work in a sock mill, and receiving a raise
of fourteen cents more an hour are all positive changes for Katrina, they are transient and not sufficient changes to remove her from poverty. As much as she desires to work at a job which is less physically and psychologically demanding and pays higher wages, to do so she must better her education. Because Katrina’s federal aid for college was rejected, she is unable to go back to school to receive an education to better herself. The cyclic patterns of Katrina’s life reflect the principles of Keynesian economics: one must possess money in order to make money. If a person barely has enough to live, let alone invest in education, then it is nearly impossible to escape the wretches of poverty. Katrina’s story reflects the untold struggles of many women in the United States, and calls for sympathy and change for the lives and wellbeing of these
be doing what she is now for the rest of her life, unless she would
A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,
enable her to surmount the many obstacles she would face. She would endure the untimely death of both parents as a teenager and would be forced to raise her
The parents who never went to school or did not finish high school in the video seemed to encourage their children to do the opposite of what they did as teenagers. A good example was Adrielys who was passionate about keeping her kids out of the streets and in school because she wanted something better for them. She believed that change and growth occurred through positive experiences with outside systems, and that new knowledge would bring change to her family. So, she did her best to keep her children out of rough neighborhoods. This is important because, for the survival of any family in Reading, the key is education.
The woman in Woman work is unhappy with her life. She has many jobs to
According to Hurricane Katrina At Issue Disasters, economic damages from Hurricane Katrina have been estimated at more than $200 billion… More than a million people were displaced by the storm… An estimated 120,000 homes were abandoned and will probably be destroyed in Louisiana alone (At * Issue). For this perspective, “Hurricane Katrina change the Gulf Coast landscape and face of its culture when it hit in 2005” (Rushton). A disaster like Katrina is something the victims are always going to remember, for the ones the lost everything including their love ones. Katrina became a nightmare for all the people that were surround in the contaminated waters in the city of New Orleans. People were waiting to be rescue for days,
Showing her options: Showing her resources, to help her provide for her family, finding her a safe place live, obtaining a job and going to back to school
On early morning of August 29th, 2005 on the Gulf Shore near New Orleans, a devastating hurricane struck. It wrecked havoc, demolishing anything in its path. Leaving nothing but mounds of trash. The surviving people were forced to leave due to massive flooding and the destruction of their homes. New Orleans was not the only place hit by Katrina but it was one of the areas that was hit the hardest. Millions of people were affected by this tragedy and the cost range was up in the billions. Crime rates went up, no one had a place to stay and water was polluted. The damage done by Katrina affected New Orleans and the other areas hit years after it struck. Restoration for the areas hit was going to need support from all of America and support groups across the country. No one was ready for this tragedy or could ever predict the horrible outcome.
finding any work very difficult. She does not like the simple, and in her view, boring way of life her sister and brother in law live.
to what she wants, as she is educated, she can choose form a number of
Waiting on the World to Change: Poverty in Camden, New Jersey, followed the lives of three poverty stricken families, in one of the toughest cities in America, through the duration of a year. Bill Moyers Journal:
I moved to New Orleans two weeks before Hurricane Katrina happenedoccurred. The hurricane had a major effect on the city’s educational system. I attended schools that were where we were operating in schools thatdespite suffering still had damage and rebuilding from Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita. The instruction in the classroom was often not challenging and many resources for advancement were not available because of the limited amount of subject offerings and
Everyone will always have an unfair situation that may not go in there favor. The most unjust situation is people in inner cities in poverty. Poverty is an unjust situation because most people are born in poverty and it is very difficult to get out The poverty rate in the US steadily rose during the first decade of the century, climbing from 12.2% in 2000 to 15.3% in 2010. Poverty is a huge issue many people do not know about and are not trying fix it, and poverty leads to so many devastating effects including starvation, low birth weight, and life expectancy.
story is not unique to single moms (Shriver, 2014). Katrina works as a CNA at an
she must get a job that will enable her to earn an income, which will in turn put her in position to