Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Holt Paperbacks. 2002. ISBN-13: 978-0805063899
Plot Summary:
Barbara Ehrenreich, a well-educated and successful writer leaves her home and life of comfort to live the life of a person earning minimum wage and trying to make it in modern America without any particular skill. She begins her experiment as a waitress in Florida, she eventually has to take a second job in order to survive and she is not very successful in her attempt at performing well in these jobs. The second location is in Maine, where she gets hired on with a housekeeping service and takes a second job at a nursing home to help make ends meet. These jobs cause her both physical and emotional pain and she finds that it is also true for her co-workers. The third location is in Minnesota where the writer gets a job working retail at Wal-Mart where she is subjected to an anti-union indoctrination and finds the tasks she is given at her job there to be repetitive. The places she lives during the experiment are varied but are mostly low-cost options such as cheap hotels that she never really feels safe in and are really too expensive for her to afford. The writer uses her experiences and supporting facts to draw a number of conclusions about the state of America’s low-paid wage earners, these conclusions are illuminating and suggest the very real need for social change.
Critical Evaluation:
The book could certainly not have been as accurately written unless the author was willing to have undergone the study by participating in it. Not only is the author a professional, disguising the names of everyone in the book and blending facts in with the running narrative of the experiment, she is also a skilled writer in that she never bores. The writer does such a good job at illustrating hardships that in some ways it is as if the reader has wondered away from 21st century America and wondered into the 19th century. The writer takes her experiment to a number of areas of the country so that she gets a varied view of the situation of a poorly-paid laborer.
A number of social and political points are made the primary one is that there are a class of people in this country which barely make a living despite working under extremely grueling conditions. As a former member of that class of people, I can attest to the accuracy of the book. Students who are not planning on going on to further themselves with education should be made to read this book. Students thinking of dropping out of high school should be made to read this work so that they are able to see what is in store for most uneducated laborers.
Reader’s Annotation:
Barbara Ehrenreich leaves a comfortable life to live as a minimum wage laborer to ascertain what it is like for the poorest wage earners in this country. She finds much more than discomfort and hard work await her, and she is able to relay the truths she has found out about the working poor in this country.
Information about the author:
Barbara Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander in Butte, Montana in 1941. She has studied physics and biology eventually obtaining her PhD in the latter subject. Although a scientist by training, Ehrenreich became interested in social issues and most of her writing surrounds various social issues. She has worked as a journalist for a number of publications and has quite a few full length books to her credit. Most of the books she has written have been non fiction, but she has one work of fiction she has also produced.
Ehrenreich has been a political activist since the 1960’s and is currently very politically active in the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a co-chairperson in this group and is also affiliated with NORML. Threads of her political philosophy come through in her writing and in the types of issues she chooses as the subjects for her work. She is divorced and has two grown children.
Genre:
Non Fiction/Ethnography
Curriculum Ties:
Career classes
Booktalking Ideas:
1. Focus on the struggles the changes the writer has to adapt to in order to fully cover this story and the rules she sets for herself.
2. Discuss the profiles of the other people in the story including the bosses and other workers and the writer’s perception of these people’s situations.
3. Discuss the differences in the part of the country that the writer studies and the unique challenges she has in each place.
Reading Level/Interest Age:
16+
Challenge Issues:
Some mention of drug use
Challenge Defense Ideas:
1. Read the book.
2. Be Familiar with the policy of the ALA and your institution.
3. Make a note of the contents of the work and how they fall in with the collection development policy of your institution and the standpoint of the ALA.
4. Gain an awareness of the awards, reviews, and criticisms of the work, as well as other works by the same writer.
5. Know the process for materials challenges at your library.
Why did you include this book? :
The book shows what it is like to try and make it in a minimum-wage job, which might be important for young people to understand when they are planning for their futures.
Author’s Website:
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