9781422281383

Roxanna lives in a poor neighborhood in south-central Los Angeles.

parents will pay for, and later they will get good jobs. Even if Roxana does get to college, she will have to work to pay her fees and living expenses. Roxana knows that her parents want her to have the oppor- tunities they never had. She says: “My father grew up in a vil- lage in Guatemala where no children went to school, and many people never learned to read and write. Twenty years ago, he made a long, dangerous journey north. It took three attempts before he could cross the border into the United States, and years of casual work before he found his job as a janitor. It

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What Is Poverty?