My Fair Lady Analysis

The book Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting by in America, written by Barbara Ehrenreich is a book that relates the experience of how she survived living on poverty-level wages in America as a waitress, maid and a Wal-mart sales associate. Barbara left her comfortable surroundings as a journalist with a Ph.D in biology to work various "unskilled" and "under compensated" jobs in order to achieve, "the old-fashioned kind of journalism". In regards to leaving her comfortable lifestyles for a few months traveling through Florida to Maine and Minnesota, she discovered that people who are paid six to seven dollars an hour did not generate enough income for those who did not want to live

Eliza changed herself for the better. In act 5, she told the two men to start calling her “Miss Doolittle” and that was the beginning of learning her self worth. She was done being treated like a “live doll” and began to see herself like a Duchess, like Higgins

In this Book Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich is based on Ehrenreich’s ethnographic research on the tricks that people in low-wage jobs are able to survive in America off their income. Ethnographic Research (“observation involves embedding oneself reply and over the long-term in a field site of study in order to systemically document the everyday lives, behaviors, and interactions of a community of people”). Throughout the book Ehrenreich places herself as much as she can in certain situations that the lower class go through on a daily basis, for this experiment Ehrenreich took on low-wage jobs in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, where she

When I purchased Nickel and Dimed earlier in the semester for the course, I read plenty of reviews saying that this was a must-read for everyone. I assumed that it would be a fairly informative book regarding the reality of poverty in America with bits and pieces of sad, disheartening testimonies thrown in along the way to reinforce our view of poverty; what I did not expect was the amount of honesty and humility that would come packed into those two hundred pages. Ehrenreich uses her experiences in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota to catch a glimpse into the lives of those living below the poverty line in America who struggle to make ends meet working

Minimum wage has always been an everyday issue in the United States. People argue that what they’re earning isn’t enough to help them live on a day to day basis. In 2001, the minimum wage in Florida was $5.15 the hour. Barbara Ehrenreich saw how this was becoming a greater issue as time went by, so she decided to take it upon herself and do some investigating on the topic. She decided to go undercover and work a series of low paying jobs to see if it was possible to live on those salaries. Ehrenreich wrote a novel about her experiences and titles it “Nickel and Dimed.” In a specific chapter titles “Serving in Florida”, she focuses on working as a waitress in a restaurant. There she talks about what their expectations are working at

Barbara Ehrenreich used her book Nickel and Dimed to illustrate her job assignment to live in the shoes of and, write about her experiences as a minimum wage worker in America. Ehrenreich goes to live in Key West, Maine, and Minnesota and works low wage jobs, sometimes more than one at a time. The point Ehrenreich is trying to make is that it is almost impossible to live a decent life in America with one, let alone two jobs paying very low wages. It is tough to be a low wage worker in America.

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich tells a powerful and gritty story of daily survival. Her tale transcends the gap that exists between rich and poor and relays a powerful accounting of the dark corners that lie somewhere beyond the popular portrayal of American prosperity. Throughout this book the reader will be intimately introduced to the world of the “working poor”, a place unfamiliar to the vast majority of affluent and middle-class Americans. What makes this world particularly real is the fact that we have all come across the hard-working hotel maid, store associate, or restaurant waitress but we hardly ever think of what their actual lives are like? We regularly dismiss these people as

1. Early in the essay, Carl T. Rowan describes Miss Bessie as five feet tall and no more than 110 pounds. While explaining how she doesn’t seem physically threatening, Rowan notes she had a “towering presence in the classroom. She was the only woman tough enough to make me read Beowulf” (411). Rowan’s resistance towards reading Beowulf led to him learning about Miss Bessie’s large brown eyes, that resembled “daggerish slits” (411). Rowan describes his former teacher in a way that resembles someone who is looking up to an authoritative figure. Whenever he comments on her appearance or personality, it he does in a very respectful context. Just by the way Rowan often talks about Miss Bessie, it’s obvious the amount of respect and admiration he has

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America details the work of Barbara Ehrenreich who undertook an economic social experiment to see if single mothers can survive financially with low wage jobs by integrating into the role of single mother entering the workforce. Of course with every experiment there were conditions and limits, for Ehrenreich there were three rules she tried not to break. Ehrenreich was to survive on low wages in three cities across America and in order to best replicate the role of a single mother with limited education and options, she could not fall back on any skills derived from her education or usual work, she was to take the highest-paying job offered, and to stay at the cheapest accommodations she could find.

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, author Barbara Ehrenreich analyzes and explains her experiences during her endeavor into living and working in low-wage America. Her ultimate ambition for attempting to live in this lifestyle is to introduce the reader to the difficulties that those with low incomes face. In order to grasp the true experience of entering the low-wage workforce, Ehrenreich essentially abandons her real life, leaving almost everything behind and starting with nearly nothing. By the end of her journey, Ehrenreich wants to answer the question of whether or not a single woman with children would be able to survive while working in low-wage America. Throughout her venture, she discovers several injustices and obstacles that low-wage workers are confronted by.

America’s lower class is omnipresent. Waiters, taxi drivers, maids, and cooks are all examples of people who likely make minimum wage or close to it. Much like with the untouchables of Hinduism, people deal with these workers daily and often do not give a second thought at how their lifestyles are. This pervasive disregard for the lower class has led to many people not knowing the seemingly insurmountable difficulties many members of the lower class face daily. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America seeks to expose the harsh realities of life for these people. She notes that some of coworkers are homeless and that others must support multiple people with an income of less than ten dollars an hour. Repeatedly, she includes details that highlight the desperately destitute conditions of her coworkers. At its core, Nickel and Dimed is a book whose author wrote to edify people of the reprehensible conditions of the lower class in the United States and the injustices of the American system.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book composed of Ehrenreich’s experiences working minimum wage in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. Ehrenreich’s sheds light onto what it is like for most minimum wage workers and brings insight into what it truly is like trying to make it on $6-$7 hourly wage. Nickel and Dimed does a wonderful job of giving insight to the everyday lives of the working class and somewhat understanding their lives better. Before reading this book, I had my share of thoughts on the working class based on what I knew from growing up with family members and even my father being apart of the working class. This book reinforced a lot ideas that I had about the working class and opened my eyes into what it means to live above the poverty line.

The Working Poor Invisible in America by David K. Shipler revolves around the underprivileged men and women living in America. It is a set of life stories told by the poor individuals mentioned and interviewed by Shipler throughout the book. They tell their life stories including the environment in which they grew up, the hardships they have faced since leaving home including the difficulty of sticking with a job for more than six months, and how they survive making minute annual incomes. Out of the people featured in the book there were numerous categories for different people and their ways they became deprived of financial stability; these include individuals whose bad luck developed when they grew up being physically, emotionally, or sexually

The main idea of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich demonstrates the complications and the way on how minimum wage workers survived during 1996 in Florida, Maine, and in Minnesota when the welfare reform had an impact on minimum wage. Her goal was to experience how to settle for rent, food, and bills while working in minimum salary. The idea of this project came in mind when she discussed with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s, about future articles in magazines and then asked “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled? How, in particular, we wondered, were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to

In this paper, I will explain how the article “The Lady and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice” by Gwendolyn Mink relates to the thematic focus of working women and the Marxist and socialist branch of feminism. In Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, Rosemarie Tong explains that Marxist and socialist feminists understand women’s oppression as a labor issue. Women’s work is not viewed as a productive contribution to society. One of the ways Marxist and socialist feminists sought to improve women’s oppression was through the wages-for-housework campaign of the 1970s, which fought for work done in the domestic sphere to be paid and respected by society. In this same vein, Mink’s article can be viewed as a continuation of sorts of the wages-for-housework campaign. Mink suggests that poor single mothers have the right for their work to be recognized by society and supported economically like the Marxist and socialist feminist in the 1970s.