What I've been reading
Mar. 29th, 2016 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarahmichigan"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich. This came out in 2001, so I was expecting that it would be outdated, but I still wanted to read it as a piece of reportage/journalism and also from a literary standpoint. While some of the particular numbers (like minimum wage vs. living wage) are now outdated, the book remains, sadly, really relevant. Ehrenreich spends time in several communities in various parts of the U.S. working low-wage jobs and seeing if she can afford food and rent (minor spoiler: she can't). Overall, I appreciated this book a lot and would recommend it to anyone who is concerned about income inequality or anyone who thinks that poor people are lazy.
and
"Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life" by Harriet McBryde Johnson. Johnson was a lawyer specializing in rights for the disabled, so I expected this book to be more political than most disability memoirs I've read, and it was. However Johnson's Southern charm and warmth comes through, as does her sheer humanity and resistance to being pitied. I found myself angry at ableist bigots and laughing at Harriet's fiestiness. I found my face streaming with tears at the end of the memoir, not because she's an "inspirational crip," which she would hate, but because of the beauty of her writing and observations about the pleasures of the body. Excellent, excellent book in every way. The world lost a truly amazing woman when she passed away. For a taste of her writing, here's one chapter that appeared as an essay in the New York Times, an essay about her debating philosopher Peter Singer about whether parents should be able to euthanize disabled children.
My full comments on both books here.
and
"Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life" by Harriet McBryde Johnson. Johnson was a lawyer specializing in rights for the disabled, so I expected this book to be more political than most disability memoirs I've read, and it was. However Johnson's Southern charm and warmth comes through, as does her sheer humanity and resistance to being pitied. I found myself angry at ableist bigots and laughing at Harriet's fiestiness. I found my face streaming with tears at the end of the memoir, not because she's an "inspirational crip," which she would hate, but because of the beauty of her writing and observations about the pleasures of the body. Excellent, excellent book in every way. The world lost a truly amazing woman when she passed away. For a taste of her writing, here's one chapter that appeared as an essay in the New York Times, an essay about her debating philosopher Peter Singer about whether parents should be able to euthanize disabled children.
My full comments on both books here.
