The purpose of this research was to describe poverty in Nunuk Y. Kusmiana’s novel Gadis Pesisir. The book describes Umar and his daughter Halijah. Umar was a fisherman who did not use modern fishing technology. This greatly affected his fishing abilities, which made the family poor. This study adopted the poverty descriptions proposed by Soeharto (2005), namely a material, social and income description. The material description included daily primary needs such as clothing, food, shelter, health service and education. The social description included social exclusion, dependence on others and an inability to participate in society. The description of income included the lack of income associated with the number of children in the family. This study used descriptive qualitative methods because this is the most suitable method for literary phenomena (Endraswara, 2011). The descriptive method does not use numbers but uses an appreciation of the interaction between the concepts that are being studied empirically (Semi: 1993). The data collection used sorting and noting. The results of the study indicated that material, social and income features are not fulfilled in this novel.
Keywords: poverty, poverty description, material, social, income