Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #30

i'm reading Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Eherenreich. got it in a little free library after seeing socialist larpers rave about it for years. i hate this b-word, and after reading ~2/3 of the book, i think that all of these people who say it's “eye-opening” are the biggest r-slurs in the world.

summary: upper class white lady spends a year working as a waitress, a maid, and at Walmart. writes book about how hard it is to be poor.

review: i hate this woman so much it's unreal. having grown up white trash myself, and clawed my way out thru white trash means, i understand logically that it just never occurred to her how hard it is to live as a single uneducated poorcel. however, emotionally her overblown reaction to her little poverty tour makes me want to beat her with hammers. every coworker in the book is talked about in the most patronizing, noble savage, whitewashed terms possible, and none of them even blast n's or smoke meth, which is just unrealistic. she is an r-slur who is basically starving to death at points in the book, yet it doesn't occur to her to eat cheaply (she's cooking flounder for meals or ordering pizza hut) or live in her car instead of paying $250/week for an extended stay (in 2001). she's so weepy and whiny about the whole thing, an adventure she took of her own free will and gets to leave whenever she wants. when she's not kvetching, she's being David Sedaris pithy, a style of writing which seems funny when you're reading it but just seems annoying when you remember it 5 minutes later. the most interesting part of this book was when she revealed that gas was $2/g in 2001; by comparison, it is much more affordable today, which i found surprising.

conclusion: no fricking shit it sucks to be poor. i am dumbfounded that most people lack the imagination or empathy to come to this realization independently and instead have to either experience it in the equivalent of a theme park ride or read about it in a 300pg New Yorker article. everyone except for me is an NPC (and the girl reading this )