Registration is open for the 2022 Connecticut Book Awards!
When: October 23, 2022 | 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Where: Hartford Public Library
Please note that clicking the button will bring you to another site for registration.
Q&A
COVID is still with us, although easing off a little, thank goodness. Did you have a favorite comfort genre to turn to when things were looking bleak? Something that lifted you away and to a different place for a while?
I love to bake and cook, and reading cookbooks gives me great joy. When I read a good cookbook, I am whisked away to somewhere where everything is beautiful. The wonderful thing about cookbooks Is that you can go back to them over and over again, and each time I read a recipe, it is a little bit different.
Where do you get your inspiration?
My inspiration comes from my belief that individual action matters. I believe that each of us has a responsibility to try to leave the world in a better place than we found it.
Who made reading important to you?
My house was full of books when I was growing up, and I loved that books could take you to a different world. It was the opportunity to see things from so many perspectives and to learn so much about things I could not personally experience.
What’s the last book that had you reading past your bedtime?
Fascism by Madeline Albright.
Where is your favorite place to read?
I read in a big chair that looks out over the Long Island Sound – it is so cozy and I could read there forever.
What are you reading now?
The Confederacy of Dunces – I read it over and over again – for some reason it is a book that gives me hope!
Bio
Joanne Samuel Goldblum is CEO and founder of the National Diaper Bank Network, encompassing more than 200 member organizations that provide diapers and other basic needs to families across America. In 2018, she founded the Alliance for Period Supplies, which provides free hygiene products to the one in four people. Joanne has spent her career working with and advocating for families in poverty. She has written op-eds for Washington Post, US News & World Report, and HuffPost. She has been an ABC Person of the Week and the subject of profiles by CNN, People, and many other outlets. Joanne is an inspiring and in-demand speaker.
Synopsis
Water. Food. Housing. The most basic and crucial needs for survival, yet 40 percent of people in the United States don’t have the resources to get them. With key policy changes, we could eradicate poverty in this country within our lifetime.
Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line—about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities.
From Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America offers an eye-opening and galvanizing look at life in poverty in this country: how circumstances and public policy conspire to keep people poor, and the concrete steps we can take to end poverty for good.
