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Data journalist and artist Mona Chalabi discussed her first book, Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, in an interview with Hyperallergic. Based on six years of interviews with people across income levels, the 2026 book uses ten characters and Chalabi’s illustrations to explore economic class and inequality in America.
Data journalist and artist Mona Chalabi is using ten people’s stories to examine class and economic inequality in America in her first book, Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, due in 2026. In an interview published by Hyperallergic, Chalabi described the project as a response to how class is often overlooked or flattened in public discussion.
Chalabi told Hyperallergic that she developed the book from meticulous interviews conducted over six years with anonymous subjects across income levels. She organized their experiences into ten characters, each representing a particular economic class. Her hand-drawn illustrations accompany the stories, alongside reflections on her own financial circumstances as a young journalist and her more recent experience following her mother’s illness.
The interview was conducted in September, when Chalabi had just recorded the book’s audiobook. She said her original manuscript began with a blunt admission that she had written the book for money; her editor advised against opening that way. Chalabi told the publication she knew the subject had commercial appeal and wanted the work to reach a wide audience.
She said she began pitching the book during the pandemic, anticipating that economic instability would be part of the conversation. But she argued that class cannot be understood only through the idea of a temporary financial downturn. “The crisis is the system that we’re in that is so broken,” she told Hyperallergic. The interview was lightly edited for clarity and length, according to the publication.
Why Ten Class Stories Matter
The book’s approach challenges broad labels such as working class, middle class and upper class by presenting economic differences through individual accounts. That may give readers a more detailed way to consider how money shapes people’s choices, relationships and access to security, though the interview does not provide the book’s full findings or data.
Chalabi told Hyperallergic that class is an important part of how she understands herself and moves through the world, yet people often speak more readily about other parts of identity. Her point is that class can be both personally consequential and difficult to discuss. The stories and drawings in Ten Lives are intended to make those distinctions more visible to a general audience.
For readers, the project also sits at the intersection of journalism, data visualization and personal narrative. Rather than presenting inequality only through abstract figures, Chalabi describes an effort to connect economic categories to lived experience. How the book’s ten portraits represent the wider population, and what conclusions readers may draw from them, will depend on the book’s full reporting and framing.
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Chalabi’s Data-Led Art Practice
Chalabi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and artist known for hand-drawn visualizations about subjects including extreme wealth, museum collections and the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Hyperallergic framed Ten Lives as an extension of that practice, applying her visual storytelling to wealth and economic inequality in the United States.
The report also describes her as an Iraqi-British journalist who has written about her own financial experiences. It says she donated her $15,000 Pulitzer Prize award to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and has advocated for Palestinian rights since her teenage years. Those details provide context for her public work, but the interview’s central subject is the making of Ten Lives and the difficulty of discussing class openly.
Chalabi connected the project’s origins to the early pandemic and expectations of a financial crisis. Her argument, as reported by Hyperallergic, is that economic distress should not be treated simply as a cycle that arrives and passes; she sees the economic system itself as central to the crisis.
What the Interview Leaves Open
The interview does not identify the ten subjects, provide their specific income categories or describe how their accounts were selected. Because the participants are anonymous, readers do not have names or other identifying details from the report with which to assess their individual stories. The source also does not set out the book’s methodology in full or say how the portraits relate to broader economic data.
The supplied report identifies Ten Lives as a 2026 publication, but does not specify a release date, publisher, price or distribution details. It is also unclear from the interview how much of the book’s final structure or wording differs from the manuscript Chalabi described. Those details should not be inferred from the discussion alone.
Publication Details and Full Book
The next major development is publication of Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, identified in the report as a 2026 book. The interview does not give a specific release date, so readers will need further publisher or author announcements for confirmed purchasing and publication information.
When the book becomes available, its full portraits and visualizations should provide more detail on how Chalabi distinguishes the ten economic classes and connects individual accounts to inequality in America. Until then, the interview establishes the project’s premise and reporting timeline, but not its complete evidence or conclusions.
Key Questions
What is Mona Chalabi’s Ten Lives about?
Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are examines class and economic inequality in America through ten characters based on interviews with anonymous people across income levels.
When is Ten Lives due to be published?
Hyperallergic identifies the book as a 2026 publication. Its interview does not provide a specific release date.
How did Chalabi research the book?
According to the interview, Chalabi conducted interviews over six years with anonymous subjects across income levels, then organized their experiences into ten characters.
What does Chalabi say about class in public discussion?
She told Hyperallergic that class shapes her identity, relationships and movement through the world, but is often missing from everyday discussion or reduced to broad categories.
Does the interview explain the book’s full findings?
No. It describes the book’s premise and reporting process, but does not give the ten subjects’ specific stories, the full research methodology or the book’s complete conclusions.
Source: hyperallergic.com
