Barbara Ehrenreich, an author, activist, journalist and self-described “myth buster” who wrote “Nickel and Dimed” and “Bait and Switch,” died Thursday. She was 81.
Ehrenreich died at a hospice facility in Alexandria, Virginia, where she also had a home, according to The New York Times. Her daughter, Rosa Brooks, said the cause was a stroke.
“She was, she made clear, ready to go,” the author’s son, Ben Ehrenreich, tweeted Friday. “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”
Friends, many of you knew our mother, Barbara Ehrenreich. She passed away yesterday, surrounded by family. We miss her already, and hope you will fight on in her spirit. https://t.co/h2DiGTxb3G
— Rosa Brooks (@brooks_rosa) September 2, 2022
Working as a waitress near Key West, Florida, in her reporting for the 2001 book, “Nickel and Dimed,” Ehrenreich quickly discovered that it took two jobs to make ends meet, The New York Times reported. She experimented at other jobs, including as a Walmart associate, a nursing home aide and hotel housekeeper and wrote that she found it nearly impossible to live on a salary that averaged $7 per hour.
Every job takes skill and intelligence, Ehrenreich wrote, and should be paid accordingly.
“Many people praised me for my bravery for having done this -- to which I could only say: Millions of people do this kind of work every day for their entire lives -- haven’t you noticed them?” Ehrenreich said in 2018 in an acceptance speech after receiving the Erasmus Prize.
The award is given to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the humanities, the social sciences or the arts, according to The New York Times.
“Heartland” author Sarah Smarsh called Ehrenreich’s contributions to U.S. discourse around class and injustice “immeasurable. ... May she rest in peace, & may we include class in every conversation about justice.”
RIP Barbara Ehrenreich pic.twitter.com/sr5rbjktQq
— Clayton Cubitt (@claytoncubitt) September 2, 2022
Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of Labor, called her “inimitable,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Our abiding thanks to her for her contributions to the labor, progressive and women’s movements, her brilliant literary journalism, and her tenacious appeals to common sense,” Reich wrote. “She will be sorely missed.”
“Barbara Ehrenreich changed my life in many ways,” New York state Rep. Emily Gallagher tweeted. “Not only was I forever inspired by ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ I recently took a deeper dive into her earlier feminist pamphlets and felt kinship by her relentless pursuit of socialist feminism. Thank you Barbara we continue your work.”
Born in Butte, Montana, and raised in a household of union supporters, Ehrenreich studied physics as an undergraduate at Reed College and received a Ph.D. in immunology at Rockefeller University, according to The Associated Press.
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward catastrophic annihilation" -Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022).
— Alfie Kohn (@alfiekohn) September 2, 2022
She had an agile mind, a gifted pen, a delicious sense of humor, and a lifelong commitment to social change...
Her book, “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” and “Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer,” called for higher minimum wages and pushed against white privilege, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Ehrenreich wrote 20 books and was also the founding editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, according to the newspaper.
Her 1989 book, “Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class,” was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Her other books included “The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed” and “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War,” according to the AP.
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