54
Activism and PoliticsBarbara Ehrenreich Dies at 81
I read her frequently in The Nation. She was currently working on a book about the evolution of narcissism. RIP
I distinctly remember reading Nickel and Dimed in my first year or two in the USA. I was working as a nursing assistant part time while getting my nursing degree and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I went on to read For Her Own Good. What a wonderful mind we've lost.
I loved her books so much! "Nickel And Dimed" and "Smile Or Die" shaped my political thinking.
We really need that book on narcissism don’t we.
I really hope her son or another researcher can complete that book from her drafts and notes.
RIP to a great one. I absolutely loved her work (her books on the harms of positivity and working class poverty in the U.S. in particular) and her outlook on life. Fresh Air interviewed her seven times, starting in 1983, and you can hear all those interviews here: https://freshairarchive.org/guests/barbara-ehrenreich?page=3
She was interviewed hundreds of times on many other podcasts and you can hear some of them here:
What a treasure she was!
thank you so much for theses resources! I agree...an absolute treasure!
May she rest in power. And, if there is a fun feminist afterlife that exists I hope she and Molly Ivins sponsor potlucks there every day.
She was a gem. This is sad news.
Cue TRAs celebrating.
Was she one of us?
People are multifacted.
She was a talented, original writer and thinker, and diligent social activist. Committed to economic equality. Open-eyed, no-holds-barred feminist. I adored what may be her least-known work, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses.
I met her once, 40 years ago, at the home of a friend. We sat in a circle of a dozen people and just talked. She was as brilliant as I expected.
AND (not BUT, not THOUGH, not YET, but simply AND)
She openly supported and voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. In Florida.
I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she voted for Hillary in 2016, but only after having trashed her for many years.
Had either 2000 or 2016 gone differently, we would still have Roe. And so, so much more.
I saw her tweet this odd thing about how maybe we are all just a little bit trans, so possibly not in that sense, but I do madly respect her work in support of class politics, which is something in short supply on the so-called "left" at the moment. Also I'm living her Nickeled and Dimed more than a little bit right now. I wonder what she thought of the gig economy.
Is this the tweet in question: https://web.archive.org/web/20190130210247/https://twitter.com/B_Ehrenreich/status/1088108327920418817 It was deleted after TRAs got angry. I think I'm missing context to fully understand it, since I'm not an American.
And this is an example of TRAs labelling her as a TERF for it: https://twitter.com/EffInvicta/status/1090644837177745408?lang=en
Don't know if she was a TERF. But she spoke for women and her books made me think. She was critical of those in power, men, billionaires, politicians, diet culture - I would expect her to be critical of gender ideology too.
I first read that as a backhanded commentary on the sudden popularity of all things trans, myself.
But considering the socio-economic background of who was drafted, fought, and died in the horrific Vietnam war, and her lifelong studies and writing about socio-economic class in the US, that's not likely. Her follow up comment "Bone spurs worked for rich men. Others needed more drastic measures." leads me to think that what she meant is that if there were a trans ban in effect then, more men would have transitioned rather than take one of the very few options which were available to them then. And that having done so, they'd still be alive and around today.
Unlike the upper class men, lower class men had few options to avoid going to and dying in the Vietnam war. They couldn't bribe doctors or collect deferments in a university. They could run to Canada never to return, or simply go to Vietnam one way or another and trust their luck to survive. Some men volunteered to join the Navy instead of waiting for the draft to take them and control where they went. I know someone who didn't trust his luck, and volunteered to join the Navy and spent the Vietnam war on a naval ship far from Vietnam. Others just waited to be called up and hoped for the best.
The Vietnam war has drifted from US consciousness, but it changed America and the course of American history (and American foreign policy and how we pursued American hegemony!) in many, many ways. An unflattering light was cast on those who had the wealth and power to keep their drafted sons out of the Vietnam meat grinder that they did not want repeated. Ever again. Our current reliance on the "all volunteer" military (and mercenaries and questionable allies) came from that.
Like most twitter posts, what she said there became just another online Rorschach test for people to squabble over and assign their own meanings to. It wasn't supporting or discrediting trans rights, it was referencing who survived the Vietnam era. And how they did it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_evasion_in_the_Vietnam_War
Witches, Midwives and Nurses by her and Deirdre English was a little bit life changing for me. It was an introduction into how women's history had been erased, as well as how the work of healing was stolen from women and transformed into something altogether different. For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women should be required reading. And it wasn't a great book by certain standards, but I really enjoyed Natural Causes: Killing Ourselves to Live Longer. I feel like in the writing of that, she made peace with the inevitability of her own death, and decided to live her later years in a way that felt right to her, regardless of what the doctors had to say about it. And for that I deeply respect her.
A brilliant woman. A gift to humanity. Long may she be remembered.
Thanks for the recommendations. I have only read two of her books and realize I should read more.
She was ridiculously productive. She authored 23 books and hundreds of articles. I've also only read a fraction of her work and now I have new resolution to read everything she ever wrote.