Gabriel Thompson
Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs
Paperback
(Bold Type Books July 12, 2011)
, First Trade Paper Edition edition
What is it like to do the back-breaking work of immigrants? To find out, Gabriel Thompson spent a year working alongside Latino immigrants, who initially thought he was either crazy or an undercover immigration agent. He stooped over lettuce fields in Arizona, and worked the graveyard shift at a chicken slaughterhouse in rural Alabama. He dodged taxisnot always successfullyas a bicycle delivery boy” for an upscale Manhattan restaurant, and was fired from a flower shop by a boss who, he quickly realized, was nuts.
As one coworker explained, These jobs make you old quick.” Back spasms occasionally keep Thompson in bed, where he suffers recurring nightmares involving iceberg lettuce and chicken carcasses. Combining personal narrative with investigative reporting, Thompson shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting, and lax government enforcementwhile telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants, and desperate US citizens alike, forced to live with chronic pain in the pursuit of 8 an hour.
- ISBN
- 1568586388 / 9781568586380
- Pages
- 336
- Weight
- 17.6 oz.
- Dimensions
- 5.6 x 0.9 in.
Enjoy reading Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs? You may also like these books
-
Gabriel Thompson
America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century
Hardcover (University of California Press March 29, 2016)
