Anonymous asked:
slatestarscratchpad answered:
I read that too and it was really good, and I was thinking about it when I wrote that. Then I made the mistake of looking for commentary about it online, and found various people who tried the same experiment with opposite results, and everyone telling everyone else they were doing it wrong or spinning it dishonestly or whatever.
It’s been a long time since I read the book; remind me what you mean?She was also horribly condescending and refused to listen to actual poor people.
It’s been years for me too so I don’t have exact quotes to support the general feel of condescension. One thing highlighted in reviews is her surprise that no one figured out she was middle class writer doing research and that they didn’t care even when she told them.
The not listening thing is hard because it’s mostly about what she didn’t do. In Scratch Beginnings, which is a new grad doing the same thing, you hear a lot of stories about how he asked the people in his homeless shelter what to do, and then did it. There are zero of those stories in Nickel and Dimed. At one point she breaks her rules and calls a doctor friend because she has a horrible rash, without ever asking a co-worker what they would do if they got a horrible rash.
The starkest example is probably when her housing costs strictly exceed her daily income, and she turns down an offer of housing from a friend. Crashing with friends is what an actual poor person in that situation would have done.
The only thing I remember about Nickel and Dimed was that she started out by living in a hotel, which I don’t think any actual poor people do. I kept wondering how she expected to earn more money than she spent on housing when she lived in a hotel.
I’ve known poor people who lived in hotels (more often motels) for a while. Some of them couldn’t afford the security deposit/first month’s rent for an apartment. Others didn’t have the kind of credit history or bank affiliation that would convince a landlord to rent to them, or couldn’t figure out the system enough to make it happen. Others got kicked out of somewhere for some reason or another and stayed in hotels until they could find somewhere else - which can be really hard if you don’t have a car and so have to live within walking/bus distance of wherever you need to be.