Review of “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” by Barbara Ehrenreich, 2001. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Paper, 221 pages.
"...a state of emergency"
Barbara Ehrenreich is probably known most for this book—out of the several she has written. This one is a classic, and it shows how she has been able to learn about and write about the American poor. In this book, she documents her research into the typical experiences of workers and how they “get by.”
This book was published in 2001. What’s ironic about writing a book about poverty, not getting by, and working for low wages is that those were GOOD TIMES in terms of the US economy. There was wealth, abundance, and great growth.
Ehrenreich gets us ready by telling us what she will do: go around the country, find low-wage jobs, and see how/if she survives on the pay, needing to pay for rent and food and other expenses. She is a writer and professional. She is educated, and she comes to realize in the jobs she finds in three different cities that the poor struggle like mad, day in and day out, to find jobs, do them, keep them, survive them, and in the meantime also figure out how to afford food and housing.
As a result of her work, she will also come to realize she is really pretty lucky with the kind of work and pay she has. Many Americans are not that lucky, she tells us.
Some of the time, the working poor live in a car…
…Or they stay with relatives. Sometimes they rely on family members for rides because cars are too expensive. Sometimes they rely on food and other resources.
Chapter 1 explains her work as a waitress in Florida. Being on her feet a great deal, and trying to find a decent and safe place to live challenge her throughout that time.
Chapter 2 involves “Scrubbing in Maine” and explains her work as a maid, going with groups to clean houses. She writes with humor and with purpose. Unfortunately, some people have jumped to wrong conclusions, I think, about some of her joking.
For example, at the start of “Chapter 3, Selling in Minnesota,” she makes a joke many would judge her for. I think she is making fun of people who have crude and accusatory opinions about Mexicans, and the poor. She refers to her “…worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they so often do.” This is a slam of people judging the Latinos – not a slam of Latinos. However, persons not very fluent in English, or not understanding the rest of her book, might think she herself has this opinion. And, of course, she does not.
She very clearly throughout the book how much she feels for people who work hard jobs for low pay.
This is clear from the first page. If anything, she is embarrassed about being a professor and writer—feeling especially at the end of the book (and her research project she has lived every day) that she is embarrassed. She is embarrassed (as she says in her evaluation section on pages 214-215) that she is part of the upper 20% of American society—where she can afford to take taxis, go to nice restaurants to dine, and go home to a nice house somebody else has cleaned.
Some people who did not read the book carefully actually judged her negatively. It takes all kinds. You will see such reviews if you google the book.
She includes an “evaluation” section at the end and makes it clear she has not only learned a great deal about the poor, but she has also been humbled by her experiences. She includes also a “reader’s guide” (pp. 217-230) with 17 questions for groups to discuss.
This would be a wonderful book to work on with a writer’s group or better yet a book club discussing important books about the poor in America and their experiences…
…I would definitely recommend this book for clubs interested in talking about these topics (or needing to).
She reveals for the reader some very important and clear messages about what poverty is, what the poor go through, how nearly impossible it is to escape, and how damaging and frustrating a life of poverty in this country really is.
One of my favorite paragraphs is this one:
“It is common, among the non-poor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition—austere, perhaps, but they get by somehow, don’t they? They are “always with us.” What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The “home” that is also a car or a van. The illness or injury that must be “worked through” with gritted teeth, because there’s no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day’s pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations. And this is how we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans—as a state of emergency” (p. 214).
This paragraph proves to me she understands that the hard-working poor, struggling to get by, are not really “living” a life. Instead, as she sees, they are stuck in a “state of emergency.”
What an excellent way to describe what the poor go through every day!