Every Day We Live Is the Future: Surviving in a City of Disasters

by Douglas Haynes

When she was only nine, Dayani Baldelomar left her Nicaraguan village with nothing more than a change of clothes. She was among tens of thousands of rural migrants to Managua in the 1980s and 1990s. After years of homelessness, Dayani landed in a shantytown called The Widows, squeezed between a drainage ditch and putrid Lake Managua. Her neighbor, Yadira Castellón, also migrated from the mountains. Driven by hope for a better future for their children, Dayani, Yadira, and their husbands invent jobs in Managua’s spreading markets and dumps, joining the planet’s burgeoning informal economy. But a swelling tide of family crises and environmental calamities threaten to break their toehold in the city. Dayani’s and Yadira’s struggles reveal one of the world’s biggest by 2050, almost one-third of all people will likely live in slums without basic services, vulnerable to disasters caused by the convergence of climate change and breakneck urbanization. To tell their stories, Douglas Haynes followed Dayani’s and Yadira’s families for five years, learning firsthand how their lives in the city are a tightrope walk between new opportunities and chronic insecurity. Every Day We Live Is the Future is a gripping, unforgettable account of two women’s herculean efforts to persevere and educate their children. It sounds a powerful call for understanding the growing risks to new urbanites, how to help them prosper, and why their lives matter for us all.

304 pages, Hardcover

Published October 9, 2017

Reviews

[Allan]

Immensely moving dual stories of the trials and tribulations of Managua's poor. The stories of Yadira and Dayani's experiences, as strong women pushing against a tide of harsh circumstances exacerbated by Climate Change, are inter-meshed with the realities of storms, infrastructural shortcomings, plummeting health, and the challenges of raising children in a sea of vices posed by the Market.

I found the sad but inspiring narratives a quick engaging read, but the intertwining structure also made it hard for me to follow. I found myself repeatedly going back to the family tree to remember who's family was being referenced.

Aside from that, I think this book is must read for anyone wanting to better understand the cycles of poverty engulfing a majority of the world and the faded hope that draws them away from the country to precarious large city shantytowns.

[Carol Hollar-Zwick]

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the stories of real people living in poverty due, at least in part, to urbanization and globalzation. The author made numerous trips to Nicaragua and got to know two women and their families very well. He details their struggles, their triumphs, and the ordinary aspects of their lives that make it so difficult for them to rise out of poverty despite their incredible work ethic, perseverence, and resilience. The author also connects dots among climate change, free trade, urban planning, and the effects of these on thousands of people. The book takes some patience--there is a lot of information, and the families he writes about are large--but it is a very rewarding read.

[Ashly Ananda]

Poverty porn. He rarely writes about the joys in these people’s lives. We are more than our traumas, and home feels like home for a reason, no matter the struggle to stay and/or go. The writing is sophmoric and full of cliches, too. This could’ve been such a good book! Bummed.