So, how does anyone live in this country on less than $10 an hour? They don't, according to journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, who spent a year trying to do so herself. Along the way, she found out that America's "working poor" get by by living in hotels, sharing apartments, sleeping in their cars, eating cheap junkfood, and working two or more menial wage jobs. Scary.

Sending to fellow BookCrosser Patchouli-Girl. Enjoy!

At a BookCrossing Meetup I had a recommendation to read this and BC'er Dangy was kind to mail it me. Though it is a New York Times Best Seller, I did not care for the book. I will agree that if you know nothing about how it is to function in America in the lower end of the economics tree, yes, read this because Ehrenreich does bring up many informative points. Her condescending tone is what I did not care for; here are two examples to help illustrate my point. The first is from the section, "Scrubbing in Maine"
"Three days into the rash, I make another trip to Old Orchard Beach and wade into the water with my clothes on (I didn't think to bring a bathing suit from Key West to Maine), trying to pretend that it's an accident when a wave washes over me and that I'm not just some pathetic street person using the beach as a bathtub."
My second example is from the opening paragraph of section three, "Selling in Minnesota". She is explaining why she picked Minneapolis over California's Central Valley,
"But warnings about the heat and the allergies put me off, not to mention my worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they so often do."
Then again, maybe her condescending tone is were I was to ignorant to catch the sarcasm.

Ehrenreich's Evaluation section was an enjoyable read, just the facts ma'am. As I said earlier, she does make some strong points. I would like to share one that made me so happy to read, I did cartwheels. :) This comes from the section, "Selling in Minnesota".
"Sure, you can drive for five minutes and get somewhere else [from Wal-Mart]--to Kmart, that is, or Home Depot, or Target, or Burger King, or Wendy's, or KFC. Wherever you look, there is no alternative to the megascale corporate order, from which every form of local creativity and initiative has been abolished by distant home offices. Even the woods and the meadows have been stripped of disorderly life forms and forced into a uniform made of concrete. What you see--highways, parking lots, stores--is all there is, or all that's left to us here in the reign of globalized, totalized, paved-over, corporatized everything. I like to read the labels to find out where the clothing we sell is made--Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Brazil--but the labels serve only to remind me that none of these places is "exotic" anymore, that they've all been eaten by the great blind profitmaking global machine."

Many people do not realize that we vote every day, for every nickel and dime we spend, we cast a vote. I try to habitually cast my votes for my fellow American Ma & Pa's.

RELEASE NOTES:

I placed it by the magazine rack.

It was still there but the other books were not, so I picked it back up to add to my planned mass release.

RELEASE NOTES:

This book is part of a mass release. I placed the books in Freezer Ziplocks and hung them from the branches of the trees. I hope the finder enjoys the read!

Can't put it down! Having lived through the "poverty" years of single parenthood, I was glad to be reminded how far I'd come, yet angered that so many are still struggling. This book is enough to awaken the activist in me.

CAUGHT IN BOISE ID USA