Americans across the economic spectrum feel a 'panic' about finances, author says

Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator and journalist Mona Chalabi has released a new book titled Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, according to It's Nice That and Kottke.org. NPR reported that Americans across the economic spectrum feel a 'panic' about finances. The book follows ten people across the United States who exist in different income deciles, from the bottom 10 percent to the top 10 percent and everything in-between, as noted by Kottke.org and It's Nice That. For five years, Mona interviewed each person to gather the lived experience of how their wealth, or lack of it, impacts their relationships, education, self-worth, and physical and mental health. Kottke.org stated that Mona researched the data behind taxes, groceries, and inheritances to understand the systems that keep people stuck. Mona explained in her interview with It's Nice That that she included a person doing surrogacy as one of the ten lives because of the confluence of maternal health and physical risk. She noted that she went into those conversations thinking the subject would be about how challenging it is to hand over a baby carried for nine months, but found that was not the case at all for many people who do surrogacy. According to It's Nice That, Mona's process involves weaving together interviews and official datasets, utilizing illustrations that undo the traditional function and form of graphs. Mona stated that relying only on averages causes data to flatten out outliers, missing much about the way the world is. Kottke.org noted that Mona herself faced these same fears when her mother's sudden illness and subsequent medical bills threatened her own financial safety. Mona told It's Nice That that people have an emotional reaction to numbers and that subjects like economics and wealth inequality are made dense and incomprehensible by design. She stated that unless people feel empowered to understand the way things are, they cannot begin to change them, and noted that people currently understand income inequality is fucked up but do not feel empowered beyond shaking their fist at the 1 percent. Kottke.org reported that part of the book's message is that class does not show up enough in our intersectional identities, which Mona describes as fundamentally dishonest. The book is described by It's Nice That as a 300-odd-page manifesto arguing that data and numbers should be more broadly accessible through creativity.