A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home - Paperback

by Laura Gottesdiener (Author), Clarence Lusane (Introduction by)

Told through the eyes of four homeowners--a grandmother in Detroit, an entrepreneur in rural North Carolina, a disabled man in Chattanooga, and a mother in Chicago--A Dream Foreclosed presents a people's history of the U.S. financial crisis and the rise of a people's movement for economic justice, dignity, and freedom from foreclosure. With power and humanity, Laura Gottesdiener bears witness to the ordinary people organizing their communities to challenge the banks and legal system. Their stories are extraordinary but the situation is all too common.

The ongoing mortgage crisis has created one of the longest and largest mass displacements in U.S history. While profiting from government bailouts, banks have evicted more than ten million Americans from their homes, their life savings, and their dreams. As many of the families victimized by bank fraud, predatory loans and other corporate crimes are African American, communities of color have been among the most outspoken and organized in confronting the banks.

Woven throughout Gottesdiener's page-turning narrative are clear explanations of the origins of the crisis, the consequences for housing, and how community organizing and social movements are having national impact.

PRAISE FOR A DREAM FORECLOSED BY LAURA GOTTESDIENER

The Columbia Journalism Review
Gottesdiener's book is a welcome, mortgage-edition proof for Faulkner's line that the past isn't dead. It's not even past ... The footnotes alone are worth the price of the book.

Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple
I'm spreading the word about Laura Gottesdiener's fine book wherever I go and wherever I am. It's] a wonderful book because at last she's made the horror of the banking machinations behind home foreclosures more transparent than anything else I've read."

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
A riveting book.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now and New York Times bestselling author
It's a really incredible book

Ralph Nader
Laura Gottesdiener has the acute eye and pen of a young progressive star with extraordinary talent. Her pages should grip you with motivational indignation.

Johanna Fernandez professor in the Department of History at Baruch College
"From the time of their capture in Africa, through Emancipation and the Great Migration, to the national economic and housing crisis of today, people of African descent in the United States have been defined by their search for home. Using the dreams and aspirations of four families as her point of departure, Laura Gottesdiener narrates a beautifully crafted story about predatory lending, foreclosure abuse, the racial politics of home ownership, and the brave struggles launched by African American communities to keep their dignities and their homes. ... a powerful, impressive and page-turning testimony that ordinary people can fight back and win."

Noam Chomsky
"The legislation to rescue the perpetrators of the current financial crisis included provisions for limited compensation to their victims...the enormity of the crime strikes home vividly in the heart-rending accounts of those who are brutally thrown out of their modest homes -- for African Americans particularly, almost all they have -- then survive in the streets, struggle on, and sometimes even regain something of what was stolen from them thanks to the courageous and inspiring work of the home liberation activists, now reinforced by the Occupy movement. All recounted with historical depth and analytic insight.

Tim Wise
"A brilliant and needed narrative by an insightful and inspiring author."

TomDispatch
A people's history of the financial crisis

Mumia Abu-Jamal , Counterpunch
"A Dream Foreclosed finds beauty amidst immense pain and suffering--the beauty of people continuing to fight back against rapacious banks, the politicians they buy and the lawyers they hire. It is a work both beautiful and terrible that deserves to be read by many."

Marc Lamont Hill, Huffington Post Live
A powerful book...

Author Biography

Laura Gottesdiener is a journalist, author and social justice activist living in Brooklyn. She has written for Rolling Stone, Ms. magazine, The Arizona Republic, The New Haven Advocate, The Huffington Post and other publications. She won the John Hersey Prize at Yale University for a body of journalistic work and was a national finalist for the Norman Mailer Nonfiction Award for her 2009 investigation of girls' wrestling. She has been an active community organizer in the Occupy movement and lived in Zuccotti Park from early October 2011 until the NYPD raid of November 15, 2011. "A Dream Foreclosed "is her first book.