Had I known

This collection of essays is fascinating because it spans about 35 years! Some of the essays are written during the reign of the first Bush, while others were written during Clinton, the second Bush, Obama, and even the first orange nightmare. So, even though some of the issues she discussed then may seem « old, » they are a painful and riveting and sometimes even hilarious reminder of what our world was doing and thinking at those times. This collection of essays also demonstrates the adage that « the more things change, the more they stay the same. »

I just realized that Barbara Ehrenreich died in 2022, what a tragic loss!! Also, I didn’t know she had studied physics and earned a PhD in immunology. I read her first book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, in the early 2000s, and it made a very strong and lasting impression on me. I still think about her book today every single time I stay at a hotel, pay cleaning people, and ask for a pizza or groceries to be delivered to my place!

This book is a collection of her essays, some short, some long, starting with the one she wrote (in addition to the aforementioned book) about her experience with what it meant to be poor and a woman in the US in the late 1990s. Other essays talk about healthcare, movies, men, politics, society, education, busyness, corporate America, science, God, Abu Ghraib, mindfulness, sex, dogs, rape, fitness, reproductive rights, and myriads other topics. Sometimes she is serious, sometimes cynical, sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, sometimes discouraged, and most of the time, very critical. Her essay about cancer, for example, which you can read there (and I strongly suggest you do), is caustic and tragic and funny and shocking and so very true (although I never had breast cancer so I can’t really judge, but she did (have breast cancer))! And her uproarious and right-on-the-money essays on family values and the « Neighborhood Porn Committee » still make me laugh today! She must have angered quite a lot of people with these!

What blows my mind is the number of different topics she talks about. She researched everything, talked to huge numbers of people, and often offers solutions to social problems that seem too logical to be accepted by our society, sadly. What does link all these diverse topics is her in-depth understanding of poverty and money, her sharp look at society’s idiotic behaviours, and her critical analyses of the problems of our world. She was an extraordinary woman, extraordinarily smart and strong and kind. And this collection of essays demonstrates this fact in every single chapter, be it about the 1990s or today. In fact, these essays should be read by students in every history class, as they are an incredible depiction of US society in the last 35-40 years.