Overview

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 riveting 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 struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these women tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how America traps millions of women and their children into lives of stunted opportunity and poverty in service of giving others of us the lives we seek. Destined to rank with works like Evicted and Nickle and Dimed for its revelatory glimpse into how our society functions behind the scenes, Getting Me Cheap also offers a way forward--with both policy solutions and a keen moral vision for organizing women across class lines.

Full Product Details

9798212556064

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Lisa Dodson is Research Professor Emerita at Boston College. She is the author of The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy and coauthor (with Amanda Freeman) of Getting Me Cheap: How Low Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty and Don't Call Us Out of Name. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Amanda Freeman is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hartford and a writer and researcher of motherhood and work. She lives in Westport, Connecticut, and Getting Me Cheap is her first book. Patryce Williams is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City and is a member of the Actors' Equity Association. She is the lead vocalist and executive producer for the band The Quiet Stars, formally known as SUM. Earning a BFA in theater at Central Connecticut State University, Patryce has lent her talents touring regional theater and singing on world-renowned stages such as the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. With a passion for reading since she first discovered novels via The Baby-Sitters Club, Patryce has since grown to love books of all kinds, including modern literature, rom com, and self-development. Her favorite job to date is serving as her son Jackson's exclusive narrator.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available