Today's entry comes from Laura of the recently re-launched Adventures of a Young Feminist! Laura Sundstrom is a 22-year-old recent grad from Beloit College with a degree in Women's and Gender Studies. She spends her spare time blogging about feminism and pop culture at Adventures of a Young Feminist. Check out her previous entry in this series!
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
This book is very well-known, but for good reason. The book follows Ehrenreich as she went "under cover" as a low income worker to try to make ends meet in minimum wage jobs. Even though I am very well aware of the economic situation and uphill battle of America's low-income people and families, this book really added a face to those struggles and made the experience more personal. Through the book I was able to better understand what people have to go through on a day-to-day, year-to-year basis. And Ehrenreich is such an amazing woman, working to improve the status of low-income people, especially women. I've heard her speak recently, and she is just a down-right inspirational person. So I couldn't not include her most well-known book.
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What I appreciate most about Ehrenreich's approach is that she never pretends to experience "what it's really like" to be poor. The point she makes is that even though she's coming from a life of substantial privilege -- education, access to fresh food and good health care, white privilege -- she found being poor to be extremely difficult. Imagine, then, what it's like to be poor and oppressed.
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