Published
Feb 27, 2020Page count
232 pagesISBN
978-1447349266Dimensions
216 x 138 mmImprint
Policy PressPublished
Feb 27, 2020Page count
232 pagesISBN
978-1447349280Dimensions
Imprint
Policy PressPublished
Feb 27, 2020Page count
232 pagesISBN
978-1447349280Dimensions
Imprint
Policy PressView 'The Shame Game' website
Buy the audiobook from Google Play
In the media
On our blog: COVID-19 is a further call to fight against inequality
On our blog: Shame is how they get away with it
On our blog: The great escape
On our blog: Writing on real life: Kerry Hudson on Project Twist-It
'Mary O'Hara on The Shame Game' on Booklaunch
'Government Resumes Business As Usual with
Benefits ‘Blame and Shame’ Game' on Byline Times
'What lunch shaming tells us about how we think about poor people' via Marketplace
'The narrative that tells people poverty is their own fault' on Free Forum with Terrence McNally
'The Shame Game – Mary O’Hara' on CapRadio Reads
Class & Poverty Shaming w/ Mary O’Hara on The Laverne Cox Show
What does it mean to be poor in Britain and America? For decades the primary narrative about poverty in both countries is that it has been caused by personal flaws or ‘bad life decisions’ rather than policy choices or economic inequality. This misleading account has become deeply embedded in the public consciousness with serious ramifications for how financially vulnerable people are seen, spoken about and treated.
Drawing on a two-year multi-platform initiative, this book by award-winning journalist and author Mary O’Hara, asks how we can overturn this portrayal once and for all. Crucially, she turns to the real experts to try to find answers – the people who live it.
Mary O’Hara is an award-winning journalist, author and producer. Her journalism appears in publications including The Guardian and Mosaic Science. She is the author of two books: The Shame Game: Overturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative (2020) & Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts in the UK (2014) and is founder of the multi-platform anti-poverty initiative, Project Twist-It. Mary has directed/produced short films, run a comedy club, been a Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley and a producer and consultant on Getting Curious podcast with Jonathan Van Ness. In 2020 she was named Best Foreign Columnist at the Southern California Journalism Awards.
PART I : The inconvenient truth: poverty is real
A short prologue
Introduction
1 Who are these ‘poor’ people anyway? Being on the breadline in Britain
2 What? There are poor people in the richest nation on earth?
PART II: Turning the screw on poor people: shame, stigma and cementing of a toxic poverty narrative
3 A twisted tale: evolution of a the poverty narrative
4 Lights, camera, vilification: the narrative in action
5 The games we play: weaponising the narrative
6 Shame on you: making the toxic narrative stick
PART III: Flipping the script: challenging the narrative war on the poor
7 Feeling it: the truth about living in poverty
8 Changing times: fighting poverty, not the poor
9 New generation: young people writing their own script
10 Altered images: constructing a new narrative