Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

Larraine didn’t put anything on layaway that day. But when her food stamps kicked in, she went to the grocery store and bought two lobster tails, shrimp, king crab legs, salad, and lemon meringue pie. Bringing it all back to Beaker’s trailer, she added Cajun seasoning to the crab legs and cooked the lobster tails in lemon butter at 350 degrees. She ate everything alone, in a single sitting, washing it down with Pepsi. The meal consumed her entire monthly allocation of food stamps. It was her and Glen’s anniversary, and she wanted to do something special. “I know our relationship may not have been good, but it was our relationship,” she said. “Some things I will not ever get over.” But the lobster helped.

Knowing how the poor have been shamed and singled-out for doing very human things, I was nervous to write about this moment. But Larraine wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed, and her sense of whimsy helped empower me to write about her special meal. Lobster on Food Stamps become one of the most discussed chapters in my book, sparking conversations about how Larraine splurged like this not because her benefits left her with so much but with so little.