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We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky
“Through a dazzling, superbly paced combination of astute history and on-the-ground observation in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Mara Kardas-Nelson holds the claims of microfinance up to the light. I wish that every new idea touted as the solution to the world’s problems had such a thoughtful and compassionate examination.”
Reviews and in the media
“[R]evealing . . .vivid . . . a deeply reported history of how the microfinance industry was created and where it went wrong. . . remarkable.”
“What happens to money loaned to extremely poor people? Who gains and who loses? In her exhaustively researched tour de force, Mara Kardas-Nelson explodes myths – in some cases, lies – bringing tough truths to microfinancing, high-interest loans, and even the Nobel Prize. We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky should be mandatory reading for everybody looking for solutions to extreme poverty.”
—Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
"By turns a fascinating global history of micro-credit and a haunting account of its effects on a handful of women in Sierra Leone, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky traces the rise, fall and afterlife of an industry built on neoliberal fantasies, on the preening of powerful poseurs, and on the backs of millions of desperate people."
—James K. Galbraith, The University of Texas at Austin and author of Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know
"Mara Kardas-Nelson has written a superb, layered, riveting book everyone should read. She takes us inside the minds of architects of microfinance programs who spent decades standing behind their inventions and the women whose lives are endlessly challenged by those programs, considering the forces and mechanisms that conspire against them and inviting us to imagine how it could be different across the world. We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky reminds us that well-intentioned is not the same as imaginative or aspirational when it comes to building systems to accompany others out of poverty."
—Ophelia Dahl, cofounder, Partners in Health
"As global inequality grows and grows, this absorbing book offers a detailed look at how and why proposed solutions to poverty take off, even as significant flaws that may in fact entrench inequality are overlooked. It shows the danger of an over-simplified story, and examines how so-called assistance for the world's poorest people can have serious and life-changing consequences"
—Sally Hayden, author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned
"A keen examination of the rise and fall in popularity of the microfinance loan system... This thoughtful deep dive into the world of microfinance is both educative and heartbreaking."
—Kirkus
“Through extensive archival research, [Kardas-Nelson] pieces together an account of the 20th-century rise of microfinance as part of America’s ‘international development’ apparatus, revealing how starry-eyed American ‘activists, feminists, and funders... create[d] the conditions’ for today’s global predatory lending problems…Kardas-Nelson’s crisp characterizations and novelistic storytelling bring clarity to a sprawling, shadowy history. The result is a devastating look at a disaster set into motion by misguided American policymakers.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This powerful chronicle traces the global rise and possible fall of microlending. . . We would all do well to heed her reminder that 'distilling deeply complicated problems into bite-size solutions is a great way to make a big mess, often without meaning to.'"
—Wall Street Journal
"With the brisk pacing of investigative journalism, Mara Kardas-Nelson’s revelatory We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance probes the perils and promises of microfinance for women in developing countries... reveal[ing] the often heartbreaking human dimensions of international monetary policy."
—BookPage
The book has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Nation, Here & Now, NPR’s Book of the Day, Forum, The Australian, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Keen On podcast, New Books in Philanthropy podcast, Radio New Zealand, KALW, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Times of India, and Africa Is a Country.
We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky, a critical history of microfinance, was published by Metropolitan Books/Holt on June 11, 2024. You order a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Bookshop, Powell’s, or Target, or, better yet, through your local independent bookstore.
For readers of Matthew Desmond, Katherine Boo, and Anand Giridharadas comes a deeply reported work of journalism that explores the promise and peril of global microfinance, told through the eyes of those who work in microfinance and women borrowers in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
If you’ve heard of microfinance, you’ve probably heard this story: In the mid-1970s, Muhammad Yunus, an American-trained Bangladeshi economist, met a poor female stool maker who needed money to expand her business and escape the grasp of local moneylenders. Recognizing that access to small amounts of credit could help her and other poor women across Bangladesh escape poverty, Yunus lent $27 to 42 women. Soon, the Grameen Bank was born, and microfinance took off around the world. In 2006, Yunus and the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” During his Nobel address, Yunus predicted that the tiny loans would “put poverty in museums.”
There’s just one problem with this story: It’s not entirely true that Yunus came up with microfinance on his own — bankers in New York, idealistic Peace Corps volunteers, bureaucrats in Washington DC and poor people themselves had a hand in creating what has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. And although an estimated 140 million people worldwide had a microfinance loan as of 2018, many borrowers find themselves not released from but poverty but enmeshed in debt, facing consequences such as jail, land grabs, and public humiliation.
Mara Kardas-Nelson's We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky is a story about unintended consequences, blind optimism and the decades-long ramifications of seemingly small policy choices that reverberate around the world. It is a story of poor women doing their best to make ends meet under the toughest circumstances, and of international development workers, funders, and advocates who promise a brighter future with a quick-fix solution that may ultimately trap poor people in poverty. The book is rooted in deeply immersive narratives of women who take out microfinance loans in Sierra Leone. Their stories are set against a detailed history of American foreign policy and how that shaped the meteoric rise of Muhammad Yunus’ lofty vision, as well as the gradual shift from non-profit to for-profit approaches across international development and within microfinance and what that means for poor people around the world.