Medicine
June 14, 2023
Plasma Donation Is a Bloody Business at the Border
Thousands of Mexicans routinely cross into Texas to sell their vital bodily fluids for cash. Is that arrangement symbiotic—or exploitative?
Poverty
Books
May 9, 2023
The Dog Had Ate the Hand
In this original short story, when two down-on-their luck Houston men try to steal copper pipes from a home, nothing goes quite as planned.
Books
March 7, 2023
Texas’s “Safety Net Hospitals” Are Better Than You Think
In his first book, Houston physician and writer Ricardo Nuila argues that these publicly funded institutions don’t deserve their awful reputation—and offer a model for mending our broken health-care system.
Being Texan
March 22, 2022
The Boy From Booker T.
A decade after losing one of their own, the former residents of an Austin housing project reckon with their upbringing and the tragedy that changed them.
Politics & Policy
December 22, 2020
“You See So Much in Our Field You Wouldn’t Believe”: San Antonio School Bus Drivers Have Become Relief Workers
Food insecurity has soared during the pandemic, but Alamo City bus drivers came up with a solution: get food to the hungry.
Politics & Policy
August 14, 2020
“I Have Nothing Left at the End of the Month”
A jobless Texan on life without the $600 federal unemployment payments.
News & Politics
May 27, 2020
In Texas’s Food Deserts, Food Banks Struggle to Do More With Less
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to what one expert calls “a perfect storm”: more hungry people, fewer volunteers, and declining donations.
Politics & Policy
April 9, 2020
Dental Procedures, Groceries, and Dart Boards: How Texans Plan on Spending Their Stimulus Checks
To combat economic downturn from the coronavirus pandemic, the IRS is sending Americans money. Many struggling Texans say it won’t be enough.
Politics & Policy
April 8, 2020
Evictions Have Stopped, But Texas Renters Will Face a Crisis in the Months Ahead
As the state's unemployment numbers skyrocket, many Texans don't know how they'll be able to honor their leases without rent relief.
News & Politics
July 25, 2017
The Drug Runners
The Tarahumara, of Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains, are the world’s greatest ultramarathoners. But in recent years, their legendary endurance has been put to a sinister use—in service of the narcos.
Politics & Policy
February 1, 2007
Ravi Batra
In The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution Against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos, the best-selling author and Southern Methodist University professor of economics expounds on corruption and the keys to global prosperity.Your new book identifies a laundry list of global economic problems. Can you single out the most worrisome?
Arts & Entertainment
February 1, 2000
Alvin Ailey
Which Oscar-winner did Alvin Ailey act alongside in the play Call Me by My Rightful Name ?
Film & TV
April 30, 1998
Getting Out
Now playing: Houston’s Fifth Ward.
Politics & Policy
May 31, 1997
The New Welfare
A little-known financial institution could be the future of the war on poverty in Texas.
Texas History
February 1, 1997
The Forgotten People
For three centuries the Kickapoo Indians moved from place to place across North America to avoid assimilation. Today they live on the outskirts of Eagle Pass: unwelcome, yet unwilling to give up the fight to preserve their culture.
News & Politics
January 1, 1997
Down on the Drag
Panhandling, digging through dumpsters for food, roaming the streets near the University of Texas campus: This is the life of Austin’s “gutter punks,” homeless kids with little money and even less hope.
Politics & Policy
September 1, 1991
Who Says One Man Can’t Change The World?
And now, speaking for the poor and downtrodden, Ernie Cortes.
News & Politics
November 1, 1988
The War Zone
When crack comes to a neighborhood, it infiltrates, it corrupts, and it destroys—and there is nothing the cops can do about it.
Politics & Policy
April 30, 1988
Just Add Water
The issues in El Paso’s colonias are watery and grave.
Being Texan
April 1, 1985
Mikey
He left his parents’ house in search of a world where things were black and white, where there were heroes and villains. What he found in the slums of Port Arthur was a world that would tolerate people like him-and take advantage of them.
Health
January 1, 1980
The Baby Factory
At Houston’s Jefferson Davis Hospital, the wonders of modern medicine collide with the raw realities of birth, poverty, neglect and hope.
News & Politics
February 1, 1979
Only the Strong Survive
“There are two things to remember about the ghetto that is Houston’s Fifth Ward. One, evil usually triumphs over good. Two, in spite of that, most of its residents retain a goodness that proves indestructible.”
News & Politics
April 30, 1978
I Was a Bum
Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime?
Being Texan
April 1, 1978
The Petrified Forest
Behind the pine curtain of deep East Texas is a world trapped in the past and hidden from the future: lush woods, poor whites, the descendants of slaves, and an aristocracy still breathing the rarefied air of the Old South.
Being Texan
April 30, 1977
The Endless Odyssey of Patrick Henry Polk
Forget all those myths about poverty and welfare. This family is real and they live it.
Texas History
April 30, 1977
The Other Texas
Rio Grande City Michael Patrick Houston Suzanne Paul Austin Harry Boyd Rosenberg Joe Baraban Ingram Harry Boyd Hillsboro Nicolas Russell Martindale
Texas History
August 31, 1976
Making the Best of It
A great photographer looks at plain people caught in the hard times of another Texas.