December 14, 2009
Thompson (There’s No José Here
) details working alongside undocumented workers in this stirring look at the bottom rung of America’s economic ladder. Thompson’s project feels initially like a gimmick; that this middle-class white American can go undercover in the lettuce fields of Arizona or the poultry plants of Alabama seems more stunt (or rehash of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed
) than sound journalism. But the warmth with which he describes his co-workers and the heartbreaking descriptions of the demanding, degrading, and low-paying jobs quickly pull the reader in. Gimmick or no, the author pushes his body and his patience to the limits, all the while deferring attention to the true heroes: his co-workers, whose dignity, perseverance, physical endurance, and manual skill are no less admirable for being born of sheer necessity. What emerges are not tales of downtrodden migrants but of clever hands and clever minds forced into repetitive and dangerous labor without legal protections. Thompson excels at putting a human face on individuals and situations alternately ignored and vilified.
February 15, 2010
Journalist Thompson ("Calling All Radicals") writes much in accord with the image of him presented by the photographs that begin several of his chapters here. Garbed and accoutered for each of the jobs he undertook to research this volumefrom picking lettuce in Yuma, AZ, to riding his bike as a flower shop and restaurant delivery man in New York Cityhe appears to be an affable young man, game to take on whatever comes next. His goal is to expose the harsh working conditions to which Latinos (and, he acknowledges, other poor Americans) are currently subjected, including "grinding, deadening work; the workplace diet of sodas and candy bars; the sleep deprivation; the frequent health emergencies; [and] the complete lack of savings." VERDICT However well intended, "The Jungle" this isn't. It's a mostly anecdotal and impressionistic account that will, however, be of interest to social scientists and public policymakers. Readers may come away hoping that "AgJobs," a bill currently being considered by Congress that seeks to relieve chronic farm labor shortages while protecting rights and opportunities for immigrant workers, is passed soon. [See also Dick Reavis's "Catching Out", reviewed above.Ed.]Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2009
A Brooklyn-based journalist spends a year undercover in America's low-wage immigrant workforce.
Thompson (Calling All Radicals: How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy, 2007, etc.), who has reported on immigrants in the past, decided to find out what it was like to work in their jobs, which tend to be the"most strenuous, dangerous and worst paid." He embarks on a series of jobs that proved to be consistently boring and often punishing, exhausting and unsafe. In Yuma, Ariz., he joined a 31-person crew that harvests 30,000 heads of lettuce daily for Dole. Stooped over in the heat, wielding an 18-inch knife for $8.37 per hour alongside Mexican guest workers, he returned to his apartment each night dirty and exhausted with badly swollen feet. Fellow workers were astonished to find him at their side:"The white guy can work!" one said. After two months, Thompson moved to Russellville, Ala., where he landed a job in a nonunion Pilgrim's Pride chicken plant that processes a quarter-million chickens per day. Working the 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift, he spent every minute on his feet breaking chicken breasts and performing other repetitive duties in the frigid, noisy block-long plant. He fought to stay awake in the tedium and popped painkillers to relieve the throbbing in his hands. His co-workers—evenly divided among whites, blacks and Latinos—often moved back and forth between dead-end jobs at the plant and Wal-Mart. Fired when his cover was blown, the author returned to New York and worked briefly at below minimum wage for a verbally abusive boss in the flower district, then became a delivery man and kitchen worker for an upscale Mexican restaurant. At each workplace, Thompson attempted with varying degrees of success to get to know his immigrant co-workers, but the sketches he offers are not especially revealing. He gives a good sense of what the jobs are like—almost entirely stultifying—but as a writer he fails to hold the interest of readers.
Wearisome confirmation of what (most) Americans already know.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
February 15, 2010
In a yearlong investigation, journalist Thompson lived among and worked side by side with undocumented workers in the hardest, lowest-paying jobs offered by the U.S. economy. He went west to pick lettuce, south to work in a chicken-processing factory, and back home to New York to work in a restaurant kitchen. Along the way, he shared the low wages, backbreaking work, ill treatment, and camaraderie of people who work in the shadows. In Arizona, he recalls desperately trying to make the five-day rule: if you can survive the first five days as a farmworker, you will be fine, meaning you will get used to swollen hands and all-over aches and pains for $8 an hour. In Alabama, he finds the local white supremacists have updated their targets to Hispanic workers and documented workers beginning to challenge exploitive labor practices. In New York, he chronicles workers with so few prospects that they work multiple jobs with no benefits. This is great immersion journalism that debunks myths about immigrants taking American jobs and living off American largesse.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)