Book Recommendations: The Undocumented Americans & Nickel and Dimed
As part of our new blog series we’ll be sharing book recommendations sent into us from our volunteers, board members, staff, and community at-large when they were given this prompt:
“WHAT BOOK HAVE YOU READ RECENTLY THAT FUELED, INSPIRED OR GAVE YOU NEW PERSPECTIVE ON CULMORE CLINIC’S WORK?
For our next entry, we have Co-Founder, Terry O’Hara Lavoie’s recommendations:
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
And here’s how Terry answered our prompt:
“The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, a DACA recipient herself, shares honest and raw stories of undocumented individuals in the US, including her own as an Ivy League-educated and undocumented American and her experience with mental illness, invisibility and bearing the weight of the unachieved dreams of others. I recognized some of Culmore Clinic's patients in the stories she shared.”
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.
In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.
Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
And here’s how Terry answered our prompt:
“Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich was written more than 10 years ago and it has stayed with me. The author went undercover, taking a series of minimum wage jobs-- without stability or benefits. These are Culmore Clinic patients, and things haven't changed for those who work hard just to get by, and barely do.”
In this now classic work, Barbara Ehrenreich, our sharpest and most original social critic, goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job―any job―can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour?
Want to purchase these books and give back to Culmore Clinic at the same time?
Purchase them from your Amazon Smile account and we get a portion of the sale! Learn more about how to set up an Amazon Smile account below:
If you shop Amazon, you can set your account to automatically instruct Amazon to gift a percentage of your order’s total to Culmore Clinic. It’s no extra cost for you, and it’s very easy to set up! Simply go to smile.amazon.com. It should automatically link to your Amazon account. Then follow the steps and when prompted search and select "Culmore Clinic." Then, anytime you want to shop, just go to smile.amazon.com and a percentage of your purchase will be donated to us! Want to double your impact? Shop for items off our Amazon Wishlist!
What are you reading?
Have a good book recommendation that has reminded you of Culmore Clinic’s work? Email us with the title, author and the answer to the prompt above and we may feature you on the next blog!