Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises

by Jodie Adams Kirshner, Michael Eric Dyson Narrated by Teri Barrington

Overview

Bankruptcy and the austerity it represents have become a common "solution" for struggling American cities. What do the spending cuts and limited resources do to the lives of city residents? In Broke, Jodie Adams Kirshner follows seven Detroiters as they navigate life during and after their city's bankruptcy. Reggie loses his savings trying to make a habitable home for his family. Cindy fights drug use, prostitution, and dumping on her block. Lola commutes two hours a day to her suburban job. For them, financial issues are mired within the larger ramifications of poor urban policies, restorative negligence on the state and federal level and-even before the decision to declare Detroit bankrupt in 2013-the root causes of a city's fiscal demise.



Broke looks at what municipal distress means, not just on paper but in practical-and personal-terms. More than 40 percent of Detroit's 700,000 residents fall below the poverty line. Post-bankruptcy, they struggle with a broken real estate market, school system, and job market-and their lives have not improved.



Detroit is emblematic. Kirshner makes a powerful argument that cities are never quite given the aid that they need by either the state or federal government for their residents to survive, not to mention flourish. Success for all America's citizens depends on equity of opportunity.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Oakland Press/Macomb Daily' Michigan Bestseller List | New York Times, Editors Choice: 11 New Books We Recommend This Week, January 16, 2020

"Kirshner's writing cuts to the bone... This is a book is worth reading for its essential story as well as its eloquence of style." —NY Journal of Books

"The book examines the reality of municipal distress, not just on paper but in practical, personal terms... Success for all America’s citizens depends on equity of opportunity." —American Bar Foundation

"Kirshner pulls back the curtain on the Detroit Renaissance to reveal an alternate African-American universe." —Star Tribune

"A lesson of special relevance for Detroit." —Detroit Free Press

"'Broke' can mean ... someone who is penniless or something that doesn’t work. In her new book Kirshner deftly explores both definitions ... and its daily impact on residents." —City Pulse

"Powerful human-interest stories [with] an unforgettable cast of characters… Kirshner is clear about her desire to expose the myth of the American dream." —Columbia Magazine

"[An] eye-opening and sometimes heartbreaking narrative." —Kirkus, Starred Review

"This is a powerful view of the seldom-seen victims of financial calamity." —Booklist

"[Kirshner] counter[s] the prevailing narrative that Detroit has revived since bankruptcy. She performed hundreds of interviews in the city, hearing heartrending stories of locals ... While these snapshots provide readers an emotional connection to Kirshner’s subjects, the author buttresses her points with statistics that reveal Detroit’s dire realities... makes a strong case for caring about the fates of the resilient citizens of Detroit." —Chapter16

"Kirshner’s humane focus on individual stories illuminates underreported problems with housing, employment, and transportation." —Library Journal

"After reading the poignant, heartbreaking, defiant pages of Broke, no one should question the need for moral referendum on how policy is created in and for urban America." —Michael Eric Dyson, from the Foreword

"A valuable cautionary tale." —Publisher's Weekly

"[A] rich, full, and a powerful answer to anyone who believes that austerity and job cuts are a necessary path to prosperity. At turns, heartbreaking, enraging and inspiring, Broke gives us close-up, vivid, portraits of real people." —Andrew Cockburn, Washington Editor, Harper's Magazine

"The current narrative of Detroit is that it's like a phoenix rising from the ashes. What Broke does is show Detroiters who aren't benefiting from corporate tax subsidies much less fine dining downtown. The stories in Broke show fortitude but also the misfortune of people who do their best to navigate amid housing and job challenges." —Natalie Moore, author of The South Side

"Broke provides a humane but clear-eyed account of the collapse and rebirth of Detroit that reveals what a court can and cannot accomplish via a well-managed municipal bankruptcy." —Paul Romer, co-recipient, 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and founding director, Marron Institute of Urban Governance, NYU

"Jodie Adams Kirshner has given us a deep and detailed look at how an event most of us know as a few newspaper headlines—the bankruptcy and vaunted resurgence of Detroit—has reached into the lives of those who lived there. But what Broke really tells us is how systems of government, law and finance can crush even the hardiest of boot-strap pullers." —Brian Alexander, author of Glass House

[Broke has] so many lessons there for urban librarianship and the role of libraries in aiding the reskilling of a workforce. —Tracie D. Hall, head of the American Library Association

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2019-07-21
A deep dive into the daily living of low-income Detroit residents as well as real estate speculators.

Kirshner (Urban Management/New York Univ.; International Bankruptcy: The Challenge of Insolvency in a Global Economy, 2018, etc.) received permission from seven individuals to conduct on-the-ground research about what occurs when a city is stuck under the weight of often arcane bankruptcy law. The burdens fall most heavily on people of color. Four of Kirshner's protagonists are black: Miles, an ambitious mid-40s construction worker bedeviled by mistaken law enforcement paperwork suggesting he is a felon; Lola, a mid-20s single mother who cannot find a conveniently located job commensurate with her college education; Reggie, a mid-40s buyer of residential properties in a city decimated by abandoned homes often emptied through fraud initiated by white lenders; and Charles, a 50-ish faithful Detroiter who earned a livable income when the automobile industry was thriving in the city. The three white protagonists are Joe, a tree surgeon business owner who optimistically relocated from New Jersey; Robin, a late 40s property developer from Los Angeles who sees moneymaking opportunities purchasing abandoned houses in certain Detroit neighborhoods; and Cindy, an early 60s Detroiter who hung on as her longtime neighborhood shifted from mostly white to nearly all low-income black, with abandoned and vandalized houses on every block. Kirshner is masterful at explaining the predatory banking and insurance industry practices that have led to impoverishment across the entire city (except for the white establishment downtown), the heartlessness of white politicians (mostly Republicans) who seemingly operate from racist viewpoints, a judicial system that offers little justice for the poor, and bankruptcy law, which was never meant to be applied to city governments. Although immersed in the lives of her protagonists, the author wisely keeps a low profile within her eye-opening and sometimes heartbreaking narrative, which ends with a brief call to action. "We cannot allow the country to fragment into areas of varying opportunity," she writes.

A significant work of social sciences and urban studies.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172854583
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	01/12/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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