Essay on Sixty-Nine Cents, by Gary Shteyngart

In my family, we have various traditions. The one i'm going to talk about is when we stayed awake through the twenty fourth all the way till midnight. Which was considered christmas. After I grew up, I asked my dad. “Why did we stay up at that time just to open presents”? His response was “You didn’t have school the next day and it was a old tradition you grandparents had when I was younger”. It was a tradition that was brought down from

Barbara Ehrenreich's intent in the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America exhibited how minimum wage isn't enough for Americans to get by on and that there's no hope for the lower class. Her main objective was achieved by living out the life of the "working poor". During the three cases studies she worked many jobs that are worked by many that are simply striving to live day to day. The jobs she had didn't generate sufficient income to avoid or help her rise out of poverty, in fact the six to seven dollar jobs made survival considerably difficult. Enitially, she believe the jobs didn't require any skill but while on her journey she started to realize they were stressful and drained a lot of energy. In addition to that she

A journalist who has Ph.D in biology wanted to know how people could live with just seven dollars per hour. In Nickel and Dimed, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, introduces how people live with low-wage jobs. She told that employers sometime see their employees as potential criminal, their employees' work environments do not suit for their works, and the employees's wages does not satisfy what they need to survive.

In the book Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting By in America the author Ehrenreich, goes under cover as a minimum wage worker. Ehrenreich’s primary reason for seriptiously getting low paying jobs is to see if she can “match income to expenses as the truly poor attempt to do everyday.”(Ehrenreich 6) Also Ehrenreich makes it extremely clear that her work was not designed to make her “experience poverty.”(6) After completing the assignment, given to her by an editor, she had planned to write an article about her experience. Her article purpose intended to reach the community that is financially well off and give them an idea how minimum wage workers deal with everyday life. It

Why should we be the ones to pay for someone to sit around at home? The answer is one simple word, welfare. There are many reasons why people mooch on welfare, rather than going out and working. The only jobs these people are qualified for are minimum wage jobs. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job…” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who mite be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships

The penny, also known simply as the one-cent coin, was first made about 230 years ago in 1787. The first penny ever made was 100% copper and it was heavier and larger than the usual penny today. The design itself was suggested by the famous Benjamin Franklin ("A Brief History of the U.S. Cent”). Lately, people have talked about the idea of abolishing the penny, but others disagree. The penny should not be abolished.

Were your perceptions of the blue collar Americans transformed or reinforced by nickel and dimmed? Have your notions of poverty and prosperity changed since reading the book? What about your own treatments of waiters, maids, salespeople?

Everybody in America has once had that shiny, copper, small penny jingling in their pockets. The smallest denomination in the U.S. worth only one cent, has been a part of this country for hundreds of years. This coinage has brought a significant effect on our strong American economy. But a problem has been brought up within the last couple decades on whether or not the penny shall be abolished or not. The penny has historical importance and is appreciated more than people believe pennies to be

When the family is packing to come to America, Mr. Smolinsky discourages his wife from bringing her dishes by telling her that, "in the new golden country, where milk and honey flows free in the streets, you’ll have new golden dishes to cook in, and not weigh yourself down with your old pots and pans" (9). He has an incredibly unrealistic picture of America. He even believes "all America will come to my feet to learn" (9). Mr. Smolinsky expects, like many immigrants, that in America he will not have to do anything, he will simply be rich. Unfortunately, his dream is quickly shattered once in the United States.

less than they need to live on" ( 270.) A good percent of high school graduates move right on to college. They graduate college and then they usually move on to make a good amount of money to live a satisfying life. However, college is not made for everyone, and what would our world be with only professionals? I agree with Ehrenreich that the minimum wage is too low because, while people with open opportunities earn a better future for their families, many like my own, are fighting to get through on a daily basis due to our economy.

One of these is that on Thanksgiving everybody comes together to my parents’ house in New Jersey for a huge feast. On Christmas only my mother and the children (me and my brother) travel to Illinois to spend a week with my grandparents. On New Years Eve we all get together at my parents’ house in New Jersey and toast to the New Year with champagne and apple cider. During Labor Day weekend all of my family travels to South Jersey to my grandfathers’ condo. We usually spend all of our time on the beach and barbequing, except on Sunday when we go to church. After all, my grandfather is a minister. One of our biggest family traditions is going back to Puerto Rico. Every year my mother and I travel back to Puerto Rico for a portion of our summer vacation. Now that I am older I travel there more often and stay there much longer. My father never joins because he doesn’t like my mothers side of the father too much and he thinks that we when we speak Spanish we are all plotting against him. Of course that’s not true though. My bother doesn’t speak Spanish so he doesn’t like to go either. I guess that tradition is one that belongs solely to my mother and I.

Since my family lived so close together, we had many family traditions that remain important. We gather for nearly every holiday for a meal and routine. For Easter every year, we have an Easter egg hunt and dinner at my grandmother’s house. For Christmas Eve, we always went to my great-grandparents house and had dinner and exchanged gifts. For Christmas, we celebrated at home, and then went to my grandmother's for breakfast with our cousins. The importance of all of the holidays we celebrated was that no matter what was going on in our lives,

Eating brings people closer together everyday, and for everyone, there are important memories that have been created because of food. Whether it’s a formal dinner, or an informal picnic, there will always be special bonds between people because food was involved. We need to have traditions with food because they form and strengthen the bonds between us.

The tradition began on Christmas day in 1994, when my great grandmother Doris Murray gave a simple housewarming gift to my mom and dad, as they had just moved in to their first house together. The gift was a cookbook she had purchased from a local church in which she was a frequent visitor to. Little did our family know that within this cookbook would be a recipe that evolved in to a tradition that would be made at all of our following family gatherings. Together, my mother and great grandmother cooked a lasagna that would be a part of the meal for Christmas supper, and almost every family function that followed. As my great grandmother was the oldest member of my father’s side of the family she was

Some of the many memories I carry with me every day of my grandmother are the holidays when we used to get together. I remember Thanksgiving and Easter most of all. On Thanksgiving the entire family would come together for dinner and then we would all stay at her house for the night. I remember this so well because we would wake up the next morning to the smell of breakfast and all the ladies would be gone shopping to the "After Thanksgiving Sale".