Summary: "A collection of compelling, hard-hitting first-person essays, poems, and photos that expose what our punitive social systems do to so many Americans. Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, former Managing Director of EHRP, gives voice to a range of gifted writers for whom "economic precarity" is more than just...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Haymarket Books 2023
Copies Available at Kingsley
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 305.569 GOIFreeman, Amanda
Summary: "Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap is a portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers-primarily women-who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: The New Press 2022
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 362.83 FRETroxell, Richard R.
Summary: "Richard R. Troxell's book Short Stories in a Long Journey blends his personal story with the life of an activist for ending and preventing homelessness. This book highlights the structural defects in our system and laws and proposes common-sense economic solutions to the problems of homelessness and substance abuse, such as the Universal Living Wage to address income inequality, a modest...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Plain View Press 2022
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 305.5 TROSummary: A teenage girl comes of age in Beverly Hills, California in 1976. Her life is further complicated by her family's tenuous financial situation and her friendship with her ne'er-do-well cousin.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 1998
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Comedy DVDs, Call number: DVD COMEDY SLUOrleck, Annelise
Summary: "The story of low-wage workers rising up around the world to demand respect and a living wage. We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages traces the evolution of a new global labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from Manila to Manhattan, from Baja California to Bangladesh, from Capetown to Cambodia. This is an up close and personal look at...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Beacon Press 2018
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 331 ORLLand, Stephanie
Summary: Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, took classes online to earn a college degree. And she wrote relentlessly: true stories of overworked and underpaid Americans; of living on food stamps and WIC coupons. Here...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Hachette Books 2019
Copies Available at Kingsley
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 921 LANCopies Available at Peninsula
1 available in Adult, Call number: B LAND LANBruder, Jessica
Summary: In a secondhand vehicle she christens "Van Halen," Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects--transient older Americans who call themselves "workampers." From campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions and the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy--one that foreshadows...
Format: sound recording-nonmusical
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Compact Disc Audio Book, Call number: CD 331.3 BRUCopies Available at Kingsley
1 available in Compact Disc Audio Book, Call number: CDA 331.3Louis, Édouard
Summary: "An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy. "Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again. Today I'm really gonna be a tough guy." Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different --...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2017
Sorry, no copies available
Place a hold to request this item.Bruder, Jessica
Summary: "From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: W. W. Norton & Company 2017
Copies Available at Peninsula
1 available in Adult, Call number: 331.3 BRUCopies Available at Woodmere
2 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 331.3 BRUCopies Available at Kingsley
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 331.3 BRUCopies Available at East Bay
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 331.3 BRUCopies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 331.3 BRURoss, Andrew
Summary: "Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 28 out of 3,140 counties in America. The single worst place in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Metropolitan Books 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 363.5 ROSLand, Stephanie
Summary: When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, it was called "an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor" (People). Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series Maid, which was viewed by 67 million households and was Netflix's fourth most-watched show...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: One Signal Publishers/Atria 2023
Copies Available at Interlochen
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: Bio LandCopies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Browsing Hot Titles, Call number: HOT TITLEEhrenreich, Barbara.
Summary: To discover how others exist on minimum wage, the author leaves her home, takes the cheapest lodgings she can find, and accepts whatever jobs she's offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she works variously as a waitress, nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She learned many things, including the fact that one job is not enough: you need at least two if you intend to live...
Format: sound recording-nonmusical
Publisher / Publication Date: Recorded Books, LLC 2004
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Compact Disc Audio Book, Call number: CD 305.569 EhrVlautin, Willy
Summary: "Barely thirty, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she's been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother Kenny. Portland's housing prices have nearly quadrupled in fifteen years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it's their last best chance to own their own...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
Copies Available at Kingsley
1 available in New Fiction, Call number: FIC VLACopies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Fiction, Call number: FIC VLAHarrow, Alix E.
Summary: "Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house--and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling--go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Tor, Tor Publishing Group 2023
Copies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Adult Fiction, Call number: FIC HARCopies Available at Woodmere
1 available in New Fiction, Call number: FIC HARSummary: "Over three years, the film follows four hard-working individuals as they strive for their piece of the American Dream but find only low wages, dead end jobs, and a tattered safety net in their way."--Container.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Docurama 2006
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC WAGSmarsh, Sarah
Summary: During Smarsh's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the '80s and '90s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country's changing economic policies solidified her family's place among the working poor. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, this...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Scribner 2018
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 921 SMARSH, SARAH SMACopies Available at Peninsula
1 available in Adult, Call number: B SMARSH SMAEhrenreich, Barbara.
Summary: Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Metropolitan Books 2001
Copies Available at East Bay
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 305.569 EHRCopies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 305.569 EHRCopies Available at Interlochen
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: Business Ehrenreich 2001Rivlin, Gary.
Summary: "A unique and riveting exploration of one of America's largest and fastest-growing industries--the business of poverty"--Provided by publisher.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Harper Business 2010
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 339.46 RIVSummary: In this landmark living history series, a Victorian tenement in the heart of London's East End has been painstakingly brought back to life. Host Michael Mosley joins a group of 21st century families as they move in and experience the tough living and working conditions of the Victorian poor.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
2 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV VICSummary: While poverty has traditionally been a problem only for the unemployed, a new demographic of Americans has emerged-the working poor. This program explores the disturbing realities that many people in low-wage jobs face every day-such as having to decide whether to pay the rent, buy groceries, or see a doctor. Viewers will learn how standards of living are often measured, how suburban areas have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: The dawning of the 21st century was a milestone in the longest and strongest economic expansion in America's history. But as the nation's fortunes rose, the emphasis on wealth-building left many feeling psychologically overdrawn. Did consumerism fill that feeling of emptiness? And did an increasing GNP really make Americans any happier? This program explores the hidden emotional costs...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Honey, Michael K
Summary: "Fifty years ago, a single bullet robbed us of one of the world's most eloquent voices for human rights and justice. [This book] goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King Jr. as an advocate of racial harmony, to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class and his call for 'nonviolent resistance' to all forms of oppression--including the economic injustice that 'takes...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: W.W. Norton & Company 2018
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 323 HONMcMillan, Tracie.
Summary: "What if you couldn't afford nine dollar tomatoes? That was the question award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan couldn't escape as she watched the debate about America's meals unfold, one that urges us to pay food's true cost - which is to say, pay more. So in 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Scribner 2012
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 641.3 MCMPolacco, Patricia
Summary: Grandma finds a way to dispel her grandchild's fear of thunderstorms.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Philomel Books 1990