Nickel

1. What is the topic? In the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich a nonfiction she confronts the problem that the lower class is struggling to get by on the minimum wage offered.She also discusses the difficulties that the lower classes face for example overbearing and strict bosses,having problems with transportation to get to work, barely making rent,nearly no breaks, and having working two jobs back to back in order to provide for their families. She goes

Feb. 3, 2016 Sociology: The Family Book Report Nickel and Dimed 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

In her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich performs a social experiment in which she transplants herself from her comfortable middle-class life and immersing herself in the plight of the “millions of American’s (who) work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages” (Ehrenreich, 2001). Her goal was to explore the consequences of the welfare reform on the approximately four million women who would be subsequently forced into the labor market, expecting

harsh and discouraging. As Barbara Ehrenreich realized through personal experience, the American dream only occurs in our dreams. Ehrenreich put herself in the position of a minimum wage worker and documented her experience and story in her book, Nickel and Dimed. Throughout the book, she reveals the reality of the American dream and makes it clear that it does not exist and minimum wage earners can not work their way from rags to riches. “We, however, are only gate-crashers in this

In Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author portrays herself as a minimum-wage worker in part of America’s “working poor”. Before writing this book, Ehrenreich was ensconced as part of the middle-upper class. As a journalist, Ehrenreich worked multiple minimum-wage jobs at The Maids, Woodcrest Residential Facility, Walmart, Hearthside and Jerry’s. All of which she had no prior experience performing except for waitressing. By working these minimum-wage jobs, Ehrenreich lives the life of

reverse the difficulty of handling it. Eventually, as strength is regained from tough obstacles, the desire to obtain their dreams escalates even further, which aids in working harder and striving to reach their goals. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, depicts the financial struggles of single mothers who raise their families through minimum-wage jobs after the welfare reform affected their lifestyles. In the novel, Ehrenreich tests the limits of living in poverty by accepting any scarce

Barbara Ehrenreich’s meritorious non-fiction, Nickel and Dimed, details the life of Ehrenreich as she goes undercover in the low-wage workforce. She works several minimum wage jobs all across the United States in the shadow of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In an excerpt from her writing, her sympathetic view towards the American low-wage workforce and their disgusting workplace is revealed through a coalition of rhetorical strategies. Ehrenreich metaphorically casts the role of Jerry’s: a restaurant

A primary source is often the best kind. For best-selling author, Barbara Ehrenreich, this means going undercover as a Jerry’s Sub shop waitress in order to gain firsthand knowledge for her book Nickel and Dimed, a study of the working poor in the United States. In the chapter “Serving in Florida” of her book, Ehrenreich narrates this experience. Through an extensive array of rhetorical devices, Ehrenreich satirically argues the hard truth that life in the working poor class is far from perfect.

In Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbara, a journalist, goes out on a project to experience the low-wage life of the lower class. Ehrenreich wants to make a point that living a life with two or more jobs is unmanageable, and that poverty is a major issue in society. Because of this, Ehrenreich decides to experience the way of life of those who belong to the lower class. Ehrenreich does this by traveling to three states, Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, where she had different occupations

million people in poverty. The only feasible path to accepting this staggering statistic as the reality of such a proud nation is by first acknowledging the accuracy of Barbara Ehrenreich’s (2001) premise as it is asserted in the final chapter of Nickel and Dimed: “Some odd optical property of our highly polarized and unequal society makes the poor almost invisible to their economic superiors” (p. 216). After we accept this as a truth, we must then move to analyze the methods by which this system