working class

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working class

Bye! American

the labor cartoons of Gary Huck & Mike Konopacki
1987

Closing time

a memoir
2010
A memoir chronicling the author's upbringing in a Philadelphia housing project in the 1960s, covering his father's erratic and emotional behavior and his own flight from the confines of his youth to follow his dreams and better his circumstances.

The loneliness of the long-distance runner

2010
Contains nine darkly comic stories of working-class men in 1950s Nottingham.

Shuggie Bain

2020
"Hugh "Shuggie" Bain spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Hismother Agnes is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for hissiblings. Dreaming of a house with its own front door and ordering happiness on credit as her husband philanders, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good but finds solace in drink. As she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety, Agnes's addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close toher-- especially her beloved Shuggie"--Adapted from dust jacket.

Mill town

reckoning with what remains
"A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town's economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname 'Cancer Valley.' In Mill Town, Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past, sifting through historical archives and scientific reports, talking to family and neighbors, and examining her own childhood to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are all afraid to violate. In exquisite prose, Arsenault explores the corruption of bodies: the human body, bodies of water, and governmental bodies, and what it's like to come from a place you love but doesn't always love you back"--Provided by the publisher.

On the clock

what low-wage work did to me and how it drives America insane
"A college-educated young professional details the grueling realities of hourly labor for the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce while outlining strategies for more humane employment practices"--OCLC.

The jungle

"A compelling graphic novel adaptation of Upton Sinclair's seminal protest novel that brings to life the harsh conditions and exploited existences of immigrants in Chicago's meatpacking industry in the early twentieth century"--.
Cover image of The jungle

The jungle

A documentary novel portraying industry's conditions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Sinclair's novel prompted public outrage which led President Theodore Roosevelt to demand an official investigation. This eventually led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws.
Cover image of The jungle

The jungle

Presents Upton Sinclair's classic novel, which depicts the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young Lithuanian immigrant struggling in early-twentieth-century America, and includes a historical time line, a theme and plot outline, critical analyses, and other study tools.

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