Approximately 45 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009. According to the Associated Press, experts believe that this year saw the largest single increase in the U. S. poverty rate since the government began keeping figures in 1959. One out of every five children in America is now living in poverty. This is the plight of the working class in a country where the rich get richer each year while the poor have lost their jobs or are stuck in low-paying dead-end jobs that will never give them a chance to improve themselves in the marketplace.
Only Michael Moore and a handful of other writers and journalists have given these people a chance to express their feelings and ideas. This masterful anthology has been compiled and edited by M. L. Liebler, a poet, literary arts activist ,and community organizer who teaches at Wayne State University. He came up with the idea of gathering material (poetry, fiction, essays, rock lyrics, and historical analysis) for a course he was teaching on labor studies. Liebler's intention was to create an anthology "for all Americans to read to better understand the plight, the successes, the humor, and the generous spirit of this country's working class." The editor lives in Detroit and when asked why he has stayed there responds: "A bad day in Detroit is better than a good day anywhere else in the world."
The workers in the extraordinary first section of the book speak out through poems. Listen to the anger in Antler's "Written after Learning Slaves in Ancient Greece and Rome Had 115 Holidays a Year." Check out the generation gap in Jan Beatty's "My Father Teaches Me to Dream." Feel the exhaustion of the hard worker in "Sweatshop Poem." Today there are plenty of unemployed and homeless people like the one in "Lazy Russ."
The second section contains short fiction, nonfiction, histories and memoirs. Here you will recognize allies and supporters of the working-class including Stephen Crane, John Sayles, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Day, Woody Guthrie, and others. We can guarantee that reading these pages your heart will go out to these men, women, and children who desperately try to survive against staggering odds.
