Barbara Ehrenreich might be best known for her ground-breaking book Nickel and Dimed, but I’ve been a fan of this muckraker since I read her books Fear of Falling and The Worst Years of Our Lives way back in the 1990s. Ehrenreich has written many books and articles on the struggles of countless Americans. Now she’s back with her latest book Had I Known-Collected Essays.
In this book, Ehrenreich’s essays take a critical look on a multitude of topics, which include Have and Have-Nots, Men, Women, God, Science and Joy, and Bourgeois Blunders. And nothing from the fall of the working class to the high price of higher education escapes her keen observations.
Had I Known begins with the essay “Nickel and Dimed” from Harper’s magazine. Ehrenreich describes her experiences working various low-wage jobs and how she barely survived. Of course, this essay bloomed into the critical and best-selling book of the same name.
In The Have and Have-Nots, Ehrenreich examines extreme CEO pay compared to lower level workers and being poor is considered a crime in some communities.
In the section on health, Ehrenreich describes in horrifying detail about her battle with breast cancer and the breast cancer research industry awash with pink sentimentality. She also takes a look at our shattered mental health system and the “selfish side of gratitude.”
Other topics covered in Had I Known include rape, patriarchy, the state of happiness in women, the attack on science (quite appropriate in the age of Covid), the cost of college, and why being “busy” has reached cult status.
Almost all of these essays ring true in 2021, even the older essays written in the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s.
Ehrenreich’s writing never fails to enlighten and engage me. She’s wise, compassionate, entertaining, and at times, quite snarky. But most of all she is a truth teller. And Had I Known tells a lot of truths.
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