in honor of tonight's state of the union...
...here are the Top 25 censored stories of last year. As a companion to the first topic, I highly recommend Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.
For a similar take on trying to get by as an adjunct professor, see Corrina Wycoff's "The Adjunct" in The Clear Cut Future.
1 comment:
Ehrenreich's book is a great read, but I never much cared for the "experiement" aspect to it. I more enjoyed her observations of work and life at work.
I find this book gets the panties of nonfiction purists rather bunched up. They think it's absurd that a well-heeled lefty intellectual could POSSIBLY know anything about what it's really like to be in the shit, as it were. I disagree. Even if you're not staying permanently one still learns a lot through immersion.
Post a Comment