Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity

In Oklahoma, one out of every six residents is poor. One in five children lives in poverty and faces food insecurity. In Hungry Oklahoma, native son and sociologist Robert Lee Maril follows in the tradition of the national bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Evicted to illuminate the lived experience of poverty and food insecurity in communities across the state.

Maril’s account is immediately personal. He begins with “guests,” as shoppers are called by volunteers, waiting in line in the swelte...