6) Do you think discrimination shaped Ehrenreich's story? In what ways?
In the various book study groups we had during our seminar period, we struggled and fought with a similar question or way of thinking. Ehrenreich was quick to admit, while she was living the struggle of minimum wage, she was completely fulfilling the role. At any point during her experiment, she made it clear that she would leave the experiment and go home if problems a, b, and c reared their ugly heads. Ehrenreich also experienced that as far as advantages went, she had a lot of them such as working transportation, a healthy body, and she was white without children. Ehrenreich could have had some discrimination due to her gender but I noted almost no discrimination of any type in the book. I do not think discrimination shaped the authors story because of her relative success (which she admitted in the last chapter, Evaluation) and ability to survive what time she was working the low wage jobs.