What is Poverty

            In the Article "What is Poverty," Jo Parker explains what poverty is, and how it affects everything in her life. She tells her personal experiences in hopes readers listen, so she can provoke change toward how poverty is thought of. Parker does this by using repetition, an angry tone, and by detailing poverty as an organized list.
             Parker writes about how poverty has affected everything in her life; from the odor to her children's future. She first describes how poverty has a negative influence on her physically, how there is always a horrible odor, and how she and her family can never get clean. She explains how exhausting it is to watch and protect her children. She then goes on to explain the mental wear-down that poverty has, and how most people don't think about it. She writes about her and her family not having a future, and how this lack of hope causes mental anguish, and makes her question why she would push on and try to survive. Parker also writes about how everything has a cost, whether it is money or bits and pieces of one's dignity and pride. Parker wants readers to be angry because she is angry. She hopes that the anger will help people to make changes to help those in poverty.
             Repetition is a technique Parker uses to get her message across. The beginning of each paragraph starts out with the phrase "Poverty is." Parker does this because she wants the reader to remember that she is trying to define poverty. Parker also uses repetition to underline the meaning readers should take from each paragraph. The word "smell" and "help" in the second and sixth paragraphs are examples of this. Repetition is also used to focus readers in on what Parker wants. In the first paragraph she uses the word "listen" four times, demonstrating clearly that she wants readers to pay attention. .
             The tone of the article helps Parker accomplish her goal. The style she writes with casts an angry tone.