From the outset of Tales of Two Cities, readers are challenged to acknowledge, confront, and interrogate the notion of the “American Dream.” This belief posits that anyone in the country can succeed because of the opportunities that the United States provides if only they work to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This bootstrap mentality creates the illusion that anything is possible and that social mobility is easy. It also blames the poor for their impoverishment by suggesting that they simply haven’t tried hard enough or were too lazy to really excel. On the contrary, the works in this collection show that people who possess little will have a difficult time rising from impoverishment since they have few resources to do so.

Time and again, readers encounter stories of such cases in the essays, poems, and brief works of fiction that appear in this anthology. Roxane Gay’s short story “How,” RS Deeran’s “Enough to Lose,” and Nami Mun’s “Apartment 1G” all confront the difficulty that impoverished Americans face as they navigate hardships and cope with barriers to financial and social equity. Gay’s protagonist, Hanna, for example, comes from a broken and poor family.