This book changed my heart. Concept: a journalist puts her own life on pause for three separate months, each time finding a place in the US filled with working poor, where she then finds a job without education or experience, and tries to survive for a month. In the process, not only does she come to the conclusion that it's not possible to do this and live a life, but also learns all these skills the working poor use that the rest of us have no idea are even a thing. It made me realize that many of those skills, that I always just called "hustle", are things that I already knew. Because family history is a thing.
It made me realize that many of the decisions I made when I went to college, like the education degree because it gave me a direct pathway to a job, just like an apprenticeship would; or especially the early marriage before I even know who I was--these decisions were based on fear of poverty, a fear so great that the idea of trying to make it out there in the world alone without a safety net was too terrifying to consider.
Gosh. Another book for my list.
ReplyDeleteThis is an amazing book. Back when I participated in a real way in my book group, this was one I forced them to read. An Indigo pick.
ReplyDeleteYes! This was a book group read and I loved it. Really eye-opening. My daughter read it for high school, then after college pretty much lived this woman's life for a year, making minimum wage and trying to make ends meet. (we helped, but still).
ReplyDeleteI think I heard her speak in an interview on our national radio station. I've always been appalled at the assumptions richer people make about the way the poor spend or earn their money. Now that both my parents have gone, one day I might write about our lives in the hard years.
ReplyDeleteWow--I never heard of this book. What a terrific concept.
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