“As an adult and as a journalist, I have stared shamelessly.” That refusal to look away is precisely what data journalist, writer, and artist Mona Chalabi has built her deeply principled career upon. Known best for her indelible data visualizations—ranging from the staggering scale of Jeff Bezos’s wealth to the Israeli government’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the persistent racial and gender biases embedded within major museum collections—the Pulitzer Prize-winning Iraqi-British journalist now tackles the multifaceted subject of wealth and economic inequality in America in her first major book, Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are (2026).
When she met with interviewers in New York’s West Village, Chalabi had just come directly from recording the book’s accompanying audiobook, a delicate and demanding process given the complex visual data mapped across its pages. To build the book, Chalabi organized meticulous interviews conducted with anonymous subjects spanning a wide array of income levels over the course of six years. She wove these extensive conversations into 10 vividly fleshed-out characters. Each figure represents a distinct economic class, illustrated in her signature hand-drawn, humanistic style. These profiles are further punctuated by intimate reflections on her own financial struggles as a young, striving journalist and, more recently, the heavy financial burdens she faced in the wake of her mother’s illness.
In producing this work, Chalabi positions herself within a long and esteemed tradition of radical data visualization, recalling pioneers such as W.E.B. Du Bois and his seminal Exhibit of American Negroes. She translates this historical lineage into a contemporary context characterized by a refreshing candor about class and the stifling silence that surrounds it—particularly within professional fields like journalism and the fine art world.
That insistence on specificity and unwavering honesty in her reporting goes hand-in-hand with her vocal political advocacy. Demonstrating her commitment beyond the page, Chalabi notably donated her $15,000 Pulitzer Prize award to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, continuing an active stance on Palestinian rights that she has maintained since she was a teenager. Her drive to seek out and represent hard truths—whether in the pages of Ten Lives or through her widely seen social media posts—is anchored in a deep-seated sensitivity and a profound sense of responsibility. In doing so, she restores a measure of humanity and dignity to the cold statistics that often capture the brutal realities of exploitation, systemic violence, and economic inequality, doing so one deliberate brushstroke at a time.
In a recent interview, Chalabi discussed the financial realities of modern journalism, the vital importance of collaboration in an era defined by professional isolation, and the art and literature that sustains her vision.
Reflecting on the origins of the book, the conversation naturally turned to the foundational decision to make class—a subject most people are conditioned to overlook or politely ignore from a young age—the primary focus of her writing.
“The first line of the original manuscript said, ‘I wrote this book because I was paid a shitload of money to write it,’” Chalabi recalled with a laugh.
When her editor gently pushed back against the blunt opening, noting that readers might be hesitant to pick up a book authored purely for a paycheck, Chalabi recognized the underlying commercial viability of the project while retaining her trademark transparency. She noted that she has always been quite shameless about wanting her work to reach a broad, diverse audience, a goal that has continually mattered to her throughout her career.
The project itself was conceived at the onset of the global pandemic. At the time, Chalabi pitched the book around the premise that an imminent financial crisis would unfold, bringing with it economic dynamics far more nuanced than standard political rhetoric about the top one percent. However, as the reality of the crisis set in, she realized that the situation could not be understood through a neat, cyclical model.
“The crisis is the system that we’re in that is so broken,” Chalabi explained.
This granular gradation of class—exploring the distinct financial strata that are usually flattened in mainstream conversations—serves as one of the most crucial contributions of the book. Traditional economic discourse tends to rely on broad, blunt categories such as working class, middle class, and upper class, erasing the vast disparities and unique pressures experienced by people living within the subcategories of these groups.
“Class is really informative about who I am and how I move through the world and my relationships,” Chalabi said. “And I felt like it was really, really lacking in our discourse. I feel a bit hesitant to use the word ‘discourse,’ but it’s just true. And it’s not just about discourse, it’s more mundane than that. It’s the way that someone like me can say, ‘I’m an Arab, cis, heterosexual woman,’ with total ease, but class doesn’t really come into it. There’s a dishonesty there. Actually, class is really, really important. And many of us aren’t really talking about that in accurate and fruitful ways.”
