We Are Not Okay

by Christian Livermore

Christian Livermore grew up a shy little girl in a turbulent family sunk in poverty, violence, substance abuse and mental illness. She ate government cheese, suffered from malnutrition and struggled to defend her body against threats both outside the house and within it. And even though she made it out, she has suffered a lifetime of consequences since: excruciating health problems, fear and shame. Especially shame. In We Are Not Okay, Livermore's deeply personal and moving essays explore what it means to grow up poor in America and ask whether it is possible to outrun the shame it grinds into your bones. She excoriates the inhumanity in how the United States treats its poor and asks the nation to confront how growing up poor in America brutalizes us and warps our perspective on ourselves, on other people and on the world.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

296 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2022

About the author

Christian’s memoir in essays, We Are Not Okay, was published by Indie Blu(e) on October 1, 2022. The Los Angeles Review of Books called it ‘ineffably important...relentless and courageous and entertaining and upsetting.’ Her debut novel, The Very Special Dead, is forthcoming from Meat for Tea Press in October, and she is also the author of a short story collection, Girl, Lost and Found (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). Her stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and literary journals including Longreads, Santa Fe Writers Project, Salt Hill Journal, The Texas Review, Meat for Tea, and Witch-Pricker. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews with an academic focus on medieval English literature and has taught creative writing at Newcastle University and medieval literature at the University of St Andrews.

Reviews

[JoAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title alone is enough to catch anyone's attention. "We are not okay" are words that resonate across the world, with anyone who's been alive for the past ten years -- or the last three, for that matter. I'm not the first to tell you, Reader, that we are still struggling through a pandemic, an era of shrinking wages and increasing inflation, inadequate housing, dismal health care, sweltering/deluging/freezing climate change, and the list goes on and on and on... And has been accruing for... well, since human society began. And that's part of Livermore's point: We have not been okay for awhile and this is an intergenerational problem, an unescapable inheritance that will just keep paying it forward over and over -- though, hopefully, with less interest for each successive cohort.

The teetering house on the stark cover of Livermore's book is home for many of us. If I had a house, it might have been my own. This is We Are Not Okay's appeal: it is a book that sends a familiar vibration in all of us (except the wealthy 5%), "us" meaning the lower, working, striving-to-be-middle-class end gamers. I think Livermore (and I) are accurate in our assumption that there are more of us in this category, more of "us" than we want to admit to. It's taken me decades to shrug off my mother's middle class aspirations and acknowledge that we've balanced on that razor edge for generations, a paycheck, a job, a single recession, a whiff of luck and one good friend away from being not okay.

Here is where Livermore shows their metal: it's not where we are now, but where we've come from that marks us. Poverty is that malingering virus that begets a comorbidity of chronic dysfunctions so banal as to be classified as "life" or "age." (Health is one of the key points Livermore brings up, health and unhealth those of the lower and lower-working classes just assume to be a part of living.)

I am writing this on my Mac Air, which I bought new (with a justified educator discount) and I have a great job -- and like Livermore, I have a degree that I thought made me... well, to be frank, classy. Now, in some ways -- and Livermore doesn't raise this point much -- my degree has elevated my status in some ways. I can command a kind of respect in some circles, not so much in others. (My brother asked me in my last year of graduate school, "What're you going to do with that degree? You must really like school, you keep going back." What he didn't say was, "For the love of biscuits, WHY?" I replied, "Yeah, I'm not going to make much money, but it's important to me." And it is. It really is. But, I digress.)

Livermore's point is: Poverty is not a number, it is not something you can grow out of or improve, except in that small incremental way, like a credit score -- but not really within one's lifetime, but through generations. Three points up in one generation. Twelve points down the next. Because someone lost a job, had a mental breakdown, fell into alcoholism... Three points up in a month. Twelve points down in this lifetime. Because I paid off my car. Poverty is not something Livermore, I, or anyone can erase with a piece of paper that confers... the title "Doctor" and a student loan. But we can learn the appropriate disguises, find the a mask that hides our origins enough. I can pump up my credit score enough to get that car loan, I can.

This is a form of code switching.

But here is where Livermore and I part ways a little. Code switching for me and for many other Americans is embedded in a racial history. Livermore is white, their experiences are also white. This is not to say Livermore is raceless; no one is without race. But there were elements of Livermore's story I couldn't fully reconcile. It is here that Livermore schools me (though it's a lesson I've learnt before, it is one worth repeating): White code switching is class-passing. Race and class are inextricably intertwined, it's true. Racial code switching for whites pulls from the intangible domain of "class."

Class of course is a tricky category, meaning so many things, some tangible like income and the size and type of your house, others intangible like the way you hold your fork. I see it in my students (of all colors and races and ethnicities) who don't ask for help in class or anywhere because they're used to not getting any, used to being beaten down, used to being denied. Class is about getting access to things and services and attention. Whiteness is about much the same, but not all whites have class. And the way in which Livermore presents that is brilliant.

Livermore's prose is authentic, the highest praise I can imagine for a memoir. It is brutal in parts and funny and sad and emotional. It is detached in other parts. It is cold and harsh. It performs the emotions and conflicts Livermore is bringing to the forefront. This swiveling, this code switching is a key characteristic of poor people. It is self hate, it is selfishness as self care. It is as convoluted as humanity because poverty is a wholly human construction built on the development of hierarchical society, that is: civilization.

Livermore's We Are Not Okay follows in the vein of Tara Westover's Educated: A Memoir in that it explores the embodied cultural legacies of poverty. However, Livermore's book differs from Westover's in that it is more relatable. First, Westover's book is grounded in a specific religious community, society, and history. Livermore's background is more ordinary and bland, therein, more relatable. Livermore might be anyone's neighbor, anyone's school mate, anyone's professor. I wonder now how much or how little do I know about my colleagues, my professors. Do I see their whiteness and assume a privilege that isn't really there? Livermore's We Are Not Okay is one to linger with any reader. I will think of it when the Fall semester begins again, as I look into my sea of students, throw back summer stories with my faculty peers. Second, and perhaps more poignantly, Livermore's We Are Not Okay does not come to a natural closure as Educated: A Memoir does. I will not spoil the ending; you'll have to read it. Let's just say Livermore's memoir is... realistic. It is not that Westover's is not, but if you've read Educated: A Memoir it does come to an organic closure. Livermore leaves us in that teetering house, pondering our own fate... This is part of the lingering of this book, a sensation that makes this worth reading.

Livermore delivers. This is a book that will stick with you. It may even dig into your bones where poverty may have been leaching away at your marrow for longer than you know.

[Claudia Piepenburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livermore's often devastating, gut-wrenching and even occasionally humorous accounting of what it's like to grow up indigent ("poor White trash") in America packs an emotional wallop that leaves you nearly breathless in its honesty. This reader was in tears two pages in.

The chapters are a series of essays creatively strung together creating a perfect whole re-telling of an imperfect life caused by poverty, mental illness, alcoholism, incest and poor choices; the last four resulting from the first. Some sentences in those chapters are so heartbreakingly bittersweet that I felt the need to copy, paste and bookmark them to refer to whenever I need a reminder that "we are not okay." The last paragraph in the chapter titled "All Come to Look for America" is a brilliantly maddening observation of this country. Livermore, who lives in Europe, writes: "When I think of America now, I feel something like the hiraeth I feel when thinking of where I grew up. But I've stopped looking for my America. The thought of that breaks my heart, but then again, I'm American. My heart was broken long ago." And on a more personal note, remembering a college advisor who supported her when she was worried that she might not graduate on time because she had to take a full load of classes while working full-time to do so, Livermore eloquently writes: "He died of prostate cancer when I was 25. I still have the last thing he wrote, a book, sitting on my shelf. I haven't read it. I have read everything else he ever wrote, but not this book. Because he died before I was able to buy it, and it feels as though once I read this book, I will have nothing left of him that is new and he will be lost to me forever."

Although Livermore not only graduated from college (despite dropping out of high school) but got a PhD and has spent much of her adult life in Europe, a place that as a child living "on the wrong side of the tracks" and eating "government food" she never even imagined she would ever see, she still feels worthless, that she somehow doesn't belong. Growing up poor does that to a person. It's an abomination really, that in one of the richest countries in the world millions of its citizens feel the same way, and like Livermore, will always believe that they're not good enough no matter what success they might achieve.

Please read "We Are Not Okay", read it and weep as the saying goes. It's not an easy read and you're going to be uncomfortable, as you should be. For all our riches, we are a morally and ethically bankrupt nation. As Livermore so well understands: we are not okay.

I received this manuscript as an advanced reader copy. It was an honor to read and review it.

[Madeline Elsinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I don't know exactly when I gave up on America. I only know that it was long after America gave up on me. There are
many stories of America, but this story is one we don't hear so often. It's the version of ourselves we don't like to think
about, the one where poor people can't always pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, where not every smart kid makes it out of the ghetto. The one where the American Dream is a lie. How do I tell it? How do I tell it so you will understand? Not for sympathy, just so you will understand what it has done to us, growing up poor.”

Thank you netgalley and Indie Blue Publishing for the eARC of We Are Not Okay by Christian Livermore!

The book of essays goes back and forth between the author’s life experiences and the problems in America specifically things like health care, student debt, and racism.

I found the discussions on the intersection of race and class, the myth of American exceptionalism, and the treatment of poor people in America really interesting. It reminded me how poor white people have been made into an “other” and deemed “not white” similarly to the Irish in the early 1900s. I learned a lot from this book and related to some aspects of it particularly the discussions on student loans and the difficulty it causes for people to work their way out of debt.

At one point, Livermore sort of suggests that we divide the US and let states break away if they don’t agree with the majority (ie states like Alabama and Missouri in regards to supporting Trump and being pro life). However I feel like this idea does a dangerous job of ignoring the fact that not everyone in those states feel the same way and would then be trapped. We can’t just abandon people and let them suffer in order for the majority democrat states to “thrive.”

The essays are heartbreaking and enraging, I highlighted a lot of quotes (a couple of my favorites I’ve shared below). The book could be slow and difficult to read at times but overall a moving, insightful read about the author’s life and the inequality in America. Ms. Livermore thank you for sharing this vulnerable side of herself and hopefully helping more people see where change is needed.

•

“We idolize wealth in America; it is our national pastime and our religion
Wealth is good, so under our ideology, the wealthy are good We want them to like us, to accept us, because we want to
be like them.”

“When I think of America now, I feel something like the hiraeth I feel when thinking of where I grew up. But I've stopped looking for my America. The thought of that breaks my heart, but then again, I'm American. My heart was broken long ago.”

[Candice Daquin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding testimony of how real life works - a no holds barred account of a brilliant young woman's life thus far, rising through extreme poverty, the shackle of need and want, the legacy of dysfunction, mental illness and going without. This is not an easy read but it's an essential read. A book of such depths and honesty you will find yourself recommending to all you know. These memoirs teach us all about how many who are invisible in the main-stream, really struggle and how despite all the odds they rise out of disadvantage. With little help or assistance, the author recounts her own fight to make something of herself, which she has done time-and-time-again, defying the usual closed doors for someone born into poverty. It is a bewitching recounting of how she did this, and also all the pitfalls along the way that only added to the hardship of getting OUT of poverty. This is a collection that every social worker should read, every psychotherapist, every economist, judge, jury and business person. It applies to us all in some ways, it speaks to the great divide of inequity in our society and how often we ignore it. There is bitter-sweet humor, down-right superb writing from an ex-journalist, and an evocative, hopeful center that leaves us feeling chastened and filled with respect for this gutsy, talented author. The stories here are disquieting, deeply moving, highly relevant and utterly necessary to counter-balance the idea we are all alright. At the same time, the author's brilliance lies in her ability to weave the truth and all its horrors, and still come out hopeful. Whilst she may have not been okay and whilst it is not okay that society perpetuates this inequality, there is also hope with writers like Livermore, that things can change. This is a once-in-a-generation book and everyone should read it. An outstanding achievement from a true fighter for justice.

[Sun Jansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was incredibly hard to put this book down once I started it. I dog-eared so many pages, many of them simply because it was beautiful writing and storytelling. (I love how she points out, just at the right moment, that she switches between present and past tense in her narrative because the past is always present.) Some passages I marked because I was affected by her bravery and honesty, and some because I related to something as someone who can’t escape the economic situation I was born into in the 70s, and still others out of a desire to get as good at articulating what needs to change in America in order for everyone to feel safe and healthy and worthy of love.

“How did we come to be this way? We had such high hopes for ourselves, such lofty principles to which we committed the nation. The answer is right there in the Constitution, in which we asserted that a slave only counted as three-fifths of a human being. That willingness to suspend our commitment to liberty when money was involved was a declaration of our true values.”

In the chapter that comes from, Christian proposes something I agree with strongly: we have to let America as we know it die. I woke up trying to come up with names for the two nations in my mind, settling on the Democratic Union of America and the Holy Republic of America. The author doesn’t attempt to propose her own solutions, though she reviews the ideas already out there that are worth examining. I see her intent as a desire to push the door open to serious dialogue. There is so much depth to this book, politically and emotionally. May it fall into the hands of readers who can actually visualize such a radically new future, and are committed to working toward it as a community.

[Caron Gentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

We Are Not Okay is an utterly brilliant, beautifully written, and hauntingly sad eulogy on poverty in the United States. Livermore’s memoir is searing in its truth and unflinching in its detail. While discussing an incredibly hard childhood and young adulthood, she writes with compassion and care. Characters are never characterised, instead their stories, and how they intersect with her own life, are treated with kindness and understanding. Even when digging into the lives of her parents—an alcoholic, drug-abusing, and bi-polar mother, and a neglectful, angry, and sexually threatening father—Livermore’s writing exhibits nostalgia, longing, some anger, and grace that enable and a recognition that she did not get what she needed in her childhood from those meant to provide safety, love, and guidance.
It would be easy to group this memoir with Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, but We Are Not Okay stands quite well on its own. Whereas Ehrenreich, as hard as she tried, could never quite grasp the reality of living in poverty, Livermore captures it, illustrating what poverty looks like and the mental and physical grind it places on a body long term. And whereas Walls’ The Glass Castle has an element of grim fantastical, We Are Not Okay is able to highlight the grim without any softening.
I read this in one evening, absolutely hooked on Livermore’s beautiful writing and the trajectory that she lays out for her readers. Truly, a grittily beautiful read.

[Michelle Kidwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

We Are Not Okay
Elegy for a Broken America
by Christian Livermore
Pub Date 01 Oct 2022
Indie Blu(e) Publishing, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
Biographies & Memoirs | Nonfiction (Adult)



I am reviewing a copy of We Are Not Okay, Elegy for a Broken America through Indie Blu(e) publishing and Netgalley:


I wanted to love this book, but I didn’t though there were good parts to this one I struggled to get through it. But she did bring up some good points, including how America often treats its poor, and the lifetime of consequences poverty often brings.



Christian Livermore grew up a shy little girl in a turbulent family sunk in poverty, violence, substance abuse and mental illness. She ate government cheese, suffered from malnutrition and struggled to defend her body against threats both outside the house and within it. And even though she made it out, she has suffered a lifetime of consequences since: excruciating health problems, fear and shame. Especially shame. In We Are Not Okay, Livermore's deeply personal and moving essays explore what it means to grow up poor in America and ask whether it is possible to outrun the shame it grinds into your bones.


I give We Are Not Okay three out of five stars

Happy Reading!

[Kris Faatz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written, searing, and essential read. Christian Livermore tells her own story candidly and unflinchingly, and in doing so, draws back the curtain on a segment of American society too often forgotten. On the surface, her story is one of overcoming the poverty and abuse she suffered as a child and young adult, but that is a too-easy summary of her experience. Hers is the struggle of a young woman who desperately wanted escape from the world she grew up in, and achieved that for herself, but at the same time, never stopped longing for the home she never had, and never stopped feeling out of place wherever she was.

Livermore infuses her personal story with excellent context about American society and its institutions, and how the structure of our society ensures that the cycle of poverty and despair is unbreakable in so many families. We Are Not Okay is a clear-eyed, necessary read for all of us who question the "American dream" and want to challenge the deeply flawed systems constructed around us.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book. The author’s story is compelling and will cause you to think hard about the class system in America. Moreover, I think anybody who struggles with a desperate attempt to escape the suffocating parts of their past while also striving to maintain a connection to that past will relate to this book. The author is honest, self-reflective, angry and compassionate with a dry sense of humor that she weaves throughout her tale. While her story is difficult, it is also filled with love. Its beauty is in its raw honesty. We are not Okay made me re-examine some of my own ideas about poverty in America and question my assumptions. I am a better human for having read this book.

[Stephen Sacco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. We all have heard memoirs described as 'searing' but this one burns with its raw honesty. It truly is an unflinching look at the effects of poverty and the deep and constant shame that it can cause for a lifetime. It's beautifully written, and even funny in parts too. You will walk away from this book with your ideas about the world, poverty, and America changed. You will pause before you ever call anybody 'white trash' after reading this book. It's in the vein of Tressie McMillan Cotton's 'Thick and Other Essays', Kiese Laymon's 'Heavy', and Ta-Neshisi Coates 'Between the World and Me'. Take up and read!

[Naveen]

Bought this after reading a post by the author (https://longreads.com/2022/10/11/some...).

The book illustrates the "shape" of the experience of poverty in America through autobiographical snapshots. There is no overall "take-home message" from it or "moral" of the story, just raw anecdotes - and this is the point, to present reality as it is. I found it unsettling and uncomfortable to see the depth of effects our system has on the poor, and the shame it inflicts upon its victims - and I think this is what the author wants us to experience while reading, to realize that as a society, *we are not okay*.

[Staci Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

***I received an Advanced Reader Copy for an honest review. All opinions are my own***

The personal essays in We Are Not Okay offer a clear window into the emotion (and financial) cost of being poor in America. Christian Livermore's writing style is raw and honest, telling readers what they cannot or do not wish to see. Ignoring the human cost of poverty in the richest country in the world is a travesty.

The book reminded me a bit of Maid and Nickle & Dimed. This is a good thing.

[jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book SO MUCH! I wasn’t sure at first if it would be up my alley because I don’t read a lot of fantasy but it turns out it’s literary fiction, which I read all the time. It’s beautiful and sad and funny and the writing is fantastic! It takes a very serious look at poverty in the U.S. and bereavement and depression among other things, too. I couldn’t put it down. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s going to stay with me for a long, long time.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important story of what it's like to grow up poor in America... and the lasting impact it has on the psyche, even for those who get out. I longed for more scenes to drive the narrative, but Livermore's book is rich with vivid imagery, and her sharp and penetrating mind and offers fresh insights on the people our country so often either judges or ignores.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sobering look at what growing up in poverty is like, and how it affects the decisions made. Not exactly the most upbeat thing to read, but it is insightful and worth reading.

[.W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

the more Livermore strays from personal experience essays (i.e. the one about dissolving the US and general politicking), the less i care. that's true for all writers i read - i couldn't possibly be less interested in their political views, even when i agree & even when they help form the person writing. that being said, the viewpoint is brutal and uncompromisingly grim throughout. her writing recalls that of Tara Westover, Jeannette Walls and Andre Dubus III - weathered and pitted with experience. it's hard to look away from this and even harder to fathom living through it. i grew up working class in a trailer park but it was nothing like this.

[Julia Barclay-Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Livermore captures not only what it is like to grow up in poverty but how that follows you into adulthood even if you have what appears to be a successful life. Class is still the great unsaid in the US, when in fact class is determinative of how well people can live here on every possible level from basics like housing and healthcare to access to creative careers or a basic sense of self-esteem. Livermore makes this human through both her ruthless self examination and analysis of the larger structures that have affected her experience. This is a must read for anyone who wants to truly understand this country.

[Julia Muller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caveat: I worked with Christian Livermore when she was a reporter in Savannah. While the book mentions her time here, the bulk of it has to do with her upbringing and life till now.

I’m not usually much on non-fiction. For me to complete such a book, it has to be compelling, drawing me in and making me want to finish. This is one of those reads.

I’ll warn you. It isn’t an easy read. There were big gaps in my reading as I had to take time to process some of the revelations. Things I never would have thought had happened to her and around her. The opening essay about a science fair project, building a volcano. A project many a child has attempted at one time or another. A project most could build from various items readily available in most households. Not Christian’s. To read of what marks a measure in her life… well, while my family wasn’t rich, we didn’t live in poverty. I would have been able to find materials to build the volcano. I took it for granted but there are those that can’t find a box of baking soda, vinegar, and all the other bits to make that gushing monument to childhood science.

Christian writes much about having very little, grow up in poverty. Also, the embarrassment it caused her in her young life and even on into adulthood. The gist of most of her essays is that poverty existed then, exists now, and will continue exists as long as there are inequities. Poverty breeds abuse: physical, sexual, substance, and mental. It affects your life and the lives of those around you. She dedicates the book to her grandmother who provided a rock for her.

Christian also provides statistics on these same things. In some books, this would be dry, choking facts. She wraps them in a digestible bite but does not make them tasty. They are cold. They speak to who we are as humans, as a species. Somewhere in my mind, I knew of these things but pushed them down. No more. As I said, my family was somewhere between that poverty level and just below middle class. I had parents that strove to nurture me and my siblings, to give us the best life they could. I now appreciate that more than ever. The old cliché about walking in another’s shoes… well, we should.

[Deirdre Fagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unforgettable book. If you grew up poor. If you have empathy for those who do. If you want to know what it’s like to grow up poor. If you care about what can be done and how we can do better, you need to read this book.