Don't Ever Let Anyone Tell You Age Softens People
Barbara Ehrenreich would like to have a word.
Late last week Barbara Ehrenreich, writer, activist, working-class hellraiser, died. She was 81.
If you haven’t read anything by Barbara Ehrenreich, I implore you to immediately change that. Not because she wrote about the working class or the perils of the wellness industry trying to convince people we can outrun death with the right pair of tennis shoes. Well, yes, because of those things, but more so because Ehrenreich’s writing is so darkly funny it hurts.
Ehrenreich didn’t just “center” the poor and working class by hovering in front of the poverty display at the Museum of People We Continually Fuck Over. Ehrenreich went and did low-wage service work herself and then with the proceeds of her most popular book, created the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to fund the work of poor and working class writers so they could tell their own stories.
I came to Ehrenreich’s writing through my mother. In 2001, Ehrenreich wrote the bestselling (and social justice classic) Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Back then I was 19, sitting in my twin bed with Winnie the Pooh sheets, having just graduated high school a year earlier. For a time, I worked at Walmart. And even then, as a surly teen cashier, it seemed weird Walmart would go hard on their anti-union efforts.
“The Union” was presented and whispered about like Michael Myers hiding behind bushes. At any time, Walmart seemed to suggest to employees, Union Myers might burst out of the clothing racks and accost their adequately compensated associates and lure us into becoming union card-signing, un-American socialists. And then, well, there went the country. No more low prices for us!
When I was an even smaller kid, my father, a union welder, took me to walkouts. Out on the picket line as a girl, I stood with the big guys in their worn out dungarees, flannel shirts, Hall & Oates feathered hair and mustaches, and froze my Rainbow Brite-loving ass to death at the Philadelphia airport.
So when my mother handed me Nickel and Dimed it was the convergence of personal history, familial rite of passage, and root-for-the-underdog-but-make-it-sting-with-humor that turned on the celestial spotlight, Beyoncé hair blowing, and I remember hearing trumpets, as I met my destiny.
Mothers: it’s like they know us before we know ourselves. Witches. The lot of them.
In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich sets out to see if she can survive on low-wage work. She cleans hotel rooms, is a cashier at Walmart, a waitress, a nursing home aide. She works in Minnesota, Key West, and Maine. What she quickly realizes is that one job will not do, she needs at least two if she “wants to live indoors.”
The federal minimum wage, it’s worth noting, is currently $7.25. People need three or four jobs if they want to live inside at that rate, now.
I think it’s important to note Nickel and Dimed was published when Ehrenreich was 60—meaning she had a full writing career before she wrote the thing that changed everything. She was 60 and angry as hell. Don’t ever let anyone tell you age makes people soft. You tell them Barbara Ehrenreich would like to have a word. And then hand them one of her 20 books.
Women so often do not get credit for their theories, ideas, or as the powder kegs we know we are for social movements. Ehrenreich received her flowers when she was still living, and that’s wonderful—too few do. But I think it’s just as important, once a woman dies, to keep showing up for her and, by extension, ourselves.
Ehrenreich’s writing continues to inspire me that our stories are best told by us. That we have something, in our trials and tribulations, that may be universal. But even if they’re not not, someone, somewhere will find a bit of themselves in what we’ve gone through. And it’s the going through that's important here — our lives should be about more than surviving so we can live indoors. We we should be participating in taking back what’s ours—our labor, leisure, joy, and power—from the people who’ve stolen it.
Rest in power, Barbara.
If you’ve already read Barbara Ehrenreich’s work, here are a few writers who pick up where she left off or bring their own classic theories (and fiction) to the genre. I compiled my recommendations into a Bookshop list. It is not meant to be comprehensive. These are the books I have read personally, and recommend. I will only highlight a few from the list, below.
Heartland: A Memoir of Working hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth / Sarah Smarsh
Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women Who a Movement Forgot / Mikki Kendall
The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America / Sarah Kendzior
Woman, Race & Class / Angela Y. Davis
Bastard Out of Carolina / Dorothy Alison
Feminism is for Everybody / bell hooks
Fuck Happiness: How Women Are Ditching the Cult of Positivity and Choosing Radical Joy / Ariel Gore
CURRENTLY
📖 Reading: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
We’re going to do a Celebrity Book Club for this one. WITH MY KID as co-host. Details to come.
🔪 Watching: Reservation Dogs, Season 2
I’m behind on this one, but I just finished the first episode and my jaw is on the floor. So good.
🥳 Listening: This 5 ½ hour Spotify playlist for anyone who graduated during the Great Recession
👑 Transitioning: With OPI’s Brown to Earth
This deep brown polish pairs best with hitting play on When Harry Met Sally. Billy Crystal, autumnal king, I loved you first.
👻 Supporting: Krystan Saint Cat
One of my favorite Instagram accounts and her art cracks me up. I cannot wait to get my “Here lies Beavis, he never scored” air freshener.