Named A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker
“The safety net is in tatters, Goyal shows, and poverty is a tightrope walk with no room for error . . . Goyal is a vivid writer — the stories he tells about these kids’ circumstances are painful and viscerally frustrating. . . Every setback will put a pit in your stomach. But then you cheer (and I cried) as Ryan has some breakthroughs."
—New York Times Book Review
An indelible portrait of three children struggling to survive in the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in America.
REVIEWS
"A monument of superb and dedicated reporting, very much in the vein of Katherine Boo and Jason DeParle. An act more of empathy than sympathy, Live to See the Day captures harsh realities in convincing, telling detail, and it will leave you looking for ways to make changes. Fortunately, Nikhil Goyal has some to offer. An instant classic."
―Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon
"In this impassioned, riveting feat of reporting, Nikhil Goyal follows three extraordinary children who climb mountains every day to defy the hand that America dealt them. If we did not already know that children cannot learn well when they are hungry, homeless, and criminalized, this book will leave us in no doubt. At once uplifting and enraging, this eloquent indictment just might move those with power to make real changes, to ensure that all of our children can live to see the day."
—Congressman Jamaal Bowman
"A heart-rending study of the heavy burden poor children bear in this country, Live to See the Day is a much-needed challenge to dreadful policy decisions, a predatory education and justice system, and a legacy of racism."
―Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth
"This powerfully realized book is a call to understand and act. Offering a reminder of the many costs exacted by deep poverty, its compelling portraits of young lives injured by humiliation, danger, and structures of exclusion also are stories of talent and resilience, struggles to overcome, and uncertain quests to survive against the odds. The significance of Live to See the Day is profound, transcending its riveting ethnography of three children, one city, one neighborhood, and one school."
―Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
"An illuminating chronicle of life on the edge amid crushing poverty and neglect in America’s poorest big city. Live to See the Day is powerful and essential reading."
―David Zucchino, author of Wilmington's Lie
"Nikhil Goyal’s gripping portrayal of three teenagers struggling to survive under the harshest of circumstances brings to life the terrible failure of the federal government to reduce poverty and ensure a decent life for all Americans. Everyone needs to read this. And then do something about it."
―Diane Ravitch, author of Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools
“An incisive, compassionate depiction of families in a crisis not of their making and a vision of the policy choices our country could adopt to save their lives.”
—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us
THE STORY
Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized families in the United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence―the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, and the drug trade. In Kensington, eighteenth birthdays are not rites of passage but statistical miracles.
One mistake drives Ryan out of middle school and into the juvenile justice pipeline. For Emmanuel, his queerness means his mother’s rejection and sleeping in shelters. School closures and budget cuts inspire Giancarlos to lead walkouts, which get him kicked out of the system. Although all three are high school dropouts, they are on a quest to defy their fate and their neighborhood and get high school diplomas.
In a triumph of empathy and drawing on nearly a decade of reporting, sociologist and policymaker Nikhil Goyal follows Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel on their mission, plunging deep into their lives as they strive to resist their designated place in the social hierarchy. In the process, Live to See the Day confronts a new age of American poverty, after the end of “welfare as we know it,” after “zero tolerance” in schools criminalized a generation of students, after the odds of making it out are ever slighter.
ABOUT
Nikhil Goyal is a sociologist and policymaker who served as senior policy advisor on education and children for Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Committee on the Budget. He developed education, child care, and child tax credit federal legislation as well as a tuition-free college program for incarcerated people and correctional workers in Vermont. He has appeared on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, and written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, The Nation, and other publications. Goyal earned his B.A. at Goddard College and M.Phil and Ph.D at the University of Cambridge. He lives in Vermont.