$144 a Month: Life in the Safety Net

Chicago: Sherwin Beach Press, 1993. Tappin, Mike. Oblong octavo. 21pp. One of 200 copies. Four photographs by Mike Tappin depict people living on insubstantial government funds, the "safety net." The text by Steve Bogira, originally published in 1983 in the Chicago Reader, details the lives of those hovering at the poverty line, those who "are too good at surviving," and the government systems that dictate where and how funds are dispersed. In particular, the essay exposes how government programs and economic structures inordinately and inherently discriminate against people of color, and especially the Black community. It wrestles with a government's responsibility to its own citizens, and what it owes to those it marginalizes. Bound with leather cords in gray paper wrappers. Fine. (Inventory #: 29975)