I don't think someone from a privileged upbringing like Mrs. Ehrenreich could possibly understand what it feels like to live the lives of those she profiled in this book. While she could step into their shoes for a brief few days, she knew she had a lavish book contract she was doing it for, she knew she had an education and a world of options available to her. She would never be able to experience something more intense: knowing she would have no safety nets, no help, no future, and a past she feared to reminisce in.
I found her condescension offensive at times. At one point, she referred to TGI Friday's in a scoffing manner, as part of an example of things the poor like; in reality most struggling people could not afford TGI Friday's, that seems to be a middle class establishment. I remember that in my own life (rife with struggle), I had seen TGI Friday's as a special occasion place, for celebrations like birthdays and holidays. Ehrenreich's attitude sheds light on how limited her understanding and pity is. She sees TGI Friday's like I would see a Burger King.
Her choice to go to a dry cleaners was far removed from the choices most underprivileged people would make. Most would hide a stain or purchase a few new outfits from a thrift store rather than blow money on dry cleaners - I cannot name a single truly poor person that I have known in my life that would even know what a dry cleaners is like and what it costs. When you struggle, you don't have room in your budget for such expenses. Barbara could only make room because she never felt real struggle.
Her food choices were also illustrative of a life of privilege. I made do with oatmeal and Ramen when I struggled, budgeting 5-10 dollars a week for food. Her purchasing habits illustrate the sort of budget a rich woman would draw up on a "poor man's salary" and reminds me of an online project I found, by someone else, where they attempted to eat all organic for 300 dollars a month (a food stamp budget). These little trial experiments run by privileged people, to get a taste of being poor, are as authentic as me claiming to be rich by wearing costume shop baubles and smoking a cigar. It's costume play, it never allows you to draw into any of the emotional and social depth of the group you're trying to understand.
These and numerous examples illustrated the fact that the book was written, simply, for an upper middle class audience. I found the book to be well-written and sometimes persuasive, but overall it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I, unlike Barbara, struggled during my lifetime and had been in similar or worse situations as the people she eyed pitifully, and then decided to write about, in her best-selling book.
This book was part of the required material we would read in a college advanced English class I was in. I found it ironic that I would have to read a wealthy woman's account of what it was like to be poor, considering my own experiences. I was a homeless 18 year old girl that had managed to win scholarships based on my high performance in high school, despite the fact I was just riding out of a 2 year struggle with schizophrenia, which I was diagnosed with at 16 after a sudden, horrific, long episode (which would fade away as rapidly as it came, only to haunt me like a specter, capable of reappearing throughout my life). Because of my illness, I had alienated my family and friends, many of which never knew the extent of my problems. I left home and lived in squalid apartments with boyfriends or friends.
There I was, without a computer, often relying on school labs to write essays and papers when I wasn't at one of my two jobs I had to churn through to even afford to support myself and the gas I needed to drive to school and to my jobs. I worked at a Toys R Us store and at a clothing store. I purchased all my clothing from thrift stores. Yet, with tremendous pride, I never spoke about my own struggles. Once I read this book, however, I felt exhausted with it's pitying tone and it's assumptions that one could possibly evoke the despair, the hideousness, of being disadvantaged.
I spoke briefly about my experiences in class, and found that people would not meet my eye, and often regarded me with distaste. When I explained how I could live on 5 dollars a week for food, stretching a box of oatmeal and ramen noodles to survive, nobody would even comment. The classroom was full of middle and upper class students that could mutter about how they could feel and understand the poor people in the book, could write essays proselytizing about the awfulness of society and how it shuts out the neediest among us. Yet at the same time, they were uncomfortable with being my friend, with helping me, with even hearing me talk about what I was going through. Knowing I was homeless and struggling had them regard me as weird, had them judging me and assuming I was a drug addict or that it was all my fault. Despite what they read, they could only apply their learned assumptions as far as it served them, to advance themselves in their class and to showily talk about how they "feel" for the poor. I simply made my much wealthier classmates uncomfortable, for I didn't exist comfortably in a book as a flat character they could sympathize over. I was a living, breathing person that challenged their imagined generosity - sure, they cared ever so deeply for the poor, and yet here was a poor person among them, and not one person offered me a place to stay or any sort of help. Of course, I didn't ask for it, but it made the things they wrote in their essays or spoke of in class completely meaningless.
I talk about my experiences within that class because it reflects my experiences reading this book as a whole. The target audience's ability to relate to poor people by living vicariously through Ehrenreich's experiences is really displacement of their guilt and lack of true compassion. I would guarantee that 90-95% of people that have read this book were only temporarily affected emotionally, and that most, if not all, were not changed for life in any way. Most would still hold the same assumptions and judgments of homeless people, of people that struggle, that need welfare to make ends meet. The majority would not dedicate a fraction of their paycheck, or their time, to help underprivileged people in their communities.
This book does not make a real difference in society. It advances Ehrenreich to required-reading status at privileged private colleges and it gives guilty, privileged people another cause or issue to tack onto the growing lists they care about but would not sacrifice for. Just like how most people are well aware of the poverty and hunger in conflict, AIDS and drought-torn Africa, and yet only a fraction of a percentage would put their lives on pause and go overseas to distribute vaccines and food aide pouches. We can all shed a tear over a documentary on Darfur, but our excuses as to why we put our own massively advantaged lives and privileges first, over going to the Sudan to volunteer, ar endless.
This book will not help the plight of the poor, it does not change the stereotypes that affect the ability of struggling and poor people to land better jobs, or help homeless people gain respect and shrug off the misconstrued assumptions applied to them by others. This book rings hollow, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of anyone who has ever TRULY struggled and endured years of struggle. I myself have had very little in my life but I constantly give back; I worked tirelessly and have put myself through nursing school and upon my graduation, I intend to travel abroad to offer humanitarian aid. I don't want to paint myself off as a saint, I am simply trying to prove my point here - this book is just meaningless heart-string tugging fodder for a guilty generation of people that are unwilling to take the steps necessary to challenge and change the social ills causing poverty and struggle in America.
The causes of poverty are intricate and networked, like a web, across the nation, connecting industries and employers. If you are not fighting actively against the forces behind them, you are supporting them (just as with remaining silent about racism, sexism or any other semi-transparent social force). We are all complicit by shopping at stores like Wal-Mart, which encourage the devastation of the lower class, or by carefully holding onto our privileges and status and refusing to actually give, and give generously and plentifully (not just money you would've spent on your latte, but money that you will actually miss, knowingly wanting it to go for those who would have never otherwise had that money in the first place).
We need to mobilize everyone to act and to vote for which companies they support and which people they reward.
We need to protest the gross overpayment of sports stars and celebrities (who in turn endorse soccer balls and Nike shirts that are made by children in sweatshops and sold by struggling people in Wal-Marts nationwide).
We need to be politically active.
Oh, but already, it's a lot of work, it requires time and effort, and a sacrifice of one's own comfort. So of course, it won't happen, but we'll see plenty of sales of books like this, which can momentarily affect someone's life but in the long run have no positive effect on the struggling working poor it intended to expose.
