Author and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich will give the Winton Tolles Lecture at Hamilton College on Monday, Oct. 7, at 8 p.m. in the College Chapel. It is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book signing and reception.
The Tolles Lecture was established in 1991 by members of the class of 1951 in memory of Winton Tolles, class of 1928 and dean of the college from 1947 to 1972. It brings to the campus distinguished writers in the fields of literature, journalism and theater to lecture and meet with students.
Ehrenreich is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Metropolitan Books, 2001). The book was her response to the questions: "How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled? And how, in particular, were the 12 million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform in 1998 going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour?"
To answer her own questions Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted the highest-paying jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels, discovering quickly that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations take an enormous mental and physical toll, and that one job is not enough – not if you intend to live indoors.
Ehrenreich noted, "With all the real life assets I've built up in middle age – bank account, IRA, health insurance, multi-room home – there waiting indulgently in the background, there was no way I was going to 'experience poverty' or find out how it 'really feels' to be a long-term low-wage worker. My aim here was much more straightforward and objective – just to see whether I could match income to expenses as the truly poor attempt to do every day." What she discovered was that, in fact, she could not.
Ehrenreich is the author of Blood Rites; The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (a New York Times bestseller); Fear of Falling:The Inner Life of the Middle Class, which was nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award; and eight other books. A frequent contributor to Time, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine, she lives near Key West, Florida.
