Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich | |
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Born | Barbara Alexander August 26, 1941 Butte, Montana, U.S. |
Died | September 1, 2022 Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. | (aged 81)
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Education |
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Genre | Nonfiction, investigative journalism |
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barbaraehrenreich |
Barbara Ehrenreich (
Early life
Ehrenreich was born to Isabelle (née Oxley) and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town".[2] In an interview on C-SPAN, she characterized her parents as "strong union people" with two family rules: "never cross a picket line and never vote Republican".[3] In a talk she gave in 1999, Ehrenreich called herself a "fourth-generation atheist".[4]
"As a little girl", she told
Ehrenreich originally studied physics at Reed College, later changing to chemistry and graduating in 1963. Her senior thesis was titled Electrochemical oscillations of the silicon anode. In 1968, she started a Ph.D program for theoretical physics, but changed early on to cellular immunology and received her Ph.D at Rockefeller University.[7][8]
In 1970, Ehrenreich gave birth to her daughter Rosa in a public clinic in New York. "I was the only white patient at the clinic, and I found out this was the health care women got," she told The Globe and Mail newspaper in 1987, "They induced my labor because it was late in the evening and the doctor wanted to go home. I was enraged. The experience made me a feminist."[9]
Career
After completing her doctorate, Ehrenreich did not pursue a career in science. Instead, she worked first as an analyst with the
In 1972, Ehrenreich began co-teaching a course on women and health with feminist journalist and academic Deirdre English. Through the rest of the seventies, Ehrenreich worked mostly in health-related research, advocacy and activism, including co-writing, with English, several feminist books and pamphlets on the history and politics of women's health. During this period she began speaking frequently at conferences staged by women's health centers and women's groups, by universities, and by the United States government. She also spoke regularly about socialist feminism and about feminism in general.[10]
Throughout her career, Ehrenreich worked as a freelance writer. She is arguably best known for her non-fiction reportage, book reviews and social commentary. Her reviews have appeared in
Ehrenreich served as founder, advisor or board member to a number of organizations including the
Between 1979 and 1981, she served as an adjunct associate professor at
In 2000, Ehrenreich endorsed the
In February 2008, she expressed support for then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.[12]
In 2001, Ehrenreich published her seminal work,
Filling in for a vacationing Thomas Friedman as a columnist with The New York Times in 2004, Ehrenreich wrote about how, in the fight for women's reproductive rights, "it's the women who shrink from acknowledging their own abortions who really irk me" and said that she herself "had two abortions during my all-too-fertile years".[15]
In her 1990 book of essays, The Worst Years of Our Lives, she wrote that "the one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks."[16]
In 2005, The New Yorker called her "a veteran muckraker".[17]
In 2006, she founded United Professionals, an organization described as "a nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization for white-collar workers, regardless of profession or employment status. We reach out to all unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed workers—people who bought the American dream that education and credentials could lead to a secure middle class life, but now find their lives disrupted by forces beyond their control."[18]
In 2009, she wrote Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, which investigated the rise of the positive thinking industry in the United States. She included her own experience after being told that she had breast cancer as a starting point in the book.[19] In this book, she brought to light various methods of what Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann called "quantum flapdoodle".[20]
Beginning in 2013, Ehrenreich was an honorary co-chair of the
Books
Nonfiction
- Ehrenreich, Barbara; Ehrenreich, John (1969). Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 9780853450863. (with John Ehrenreich)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1971). The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. ISBN 9780394714530. (with John Ehrenreich and Health PAC)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (1972). Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Feminist Press. ISBN 0912670134. (with Deirdre English)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (1973). Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. Feminist Press at CUNY. ISBN 9781558616950. (with Deirdre English)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (1978). For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women. Anchor Press. ISBN 9780385126502. (with Deirdre English)
- Fuentes, Annette; Fuentes, Carlos; Ehrenreich, Barbara (1983). Women in the Global Factory. South End Press. ISBN 9780896081987.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1983). The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. Anchor Press/Doubleday. ISBN 9780385176149.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara; Hess, Elizabeth; Jacobs, Gloria (1986). Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex. Anchor Press/Doubleday. ISBN 9780385184984. (with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs)
- Block, Fred L.; Cloward, Richard A.; Piven, Frances Fox (1987). The Mean Season: Attack on the Welfare State. Pantheon Books. Richard A. Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1989). Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. Pantheon Books. ISBN 9780394556925.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1990). The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed. HarperPerennial. ISBN 9780060973841.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1995). The Snarling Citizen: Essays. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374266486.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1997). Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. DIANE Publishing Company. ISBN 9780756754389.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2001). ISBN 9780805063882.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara; Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2003). Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. Macmillan. ISBN 9780805069952. (ed., with Arlie Hochschild)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2005). ISBN 9780805076066.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2007). ISBN 9780805057232.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2008). This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. New York: Metropolitan Books. OCLC 182737659.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2009). Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America. New York: Metropolitan Books. OCLC 317928923. (UK: Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World)
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2014). Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything. New York: Twelve. OCLC 856053601.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2018). Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer. New York: Twelve. OCLC 1039523821.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (2020). Had I Known: Collected Essays. Twelve. ISBN 978-1-4555-4369-4.
- Fiction
- Ehrenreich, Barbara (1993). Kipper's Game. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. ISBN 9780374181550.
Essays
- Ehrenreich, John and Barbara (1979). "The ISBN 978-0896080386.
- "The Charge: Gynocide", investigative journalism about the Dalkon Shield in the third world, Mother Jones, November/December issue, 1979
- "Making Sense of La Difference", Time, 1992
- "Burt, Loni and Our Way of Life", Time, September 20, 1993
- "In Defense of Talk Shows", Time, December 4, 1995
- "The New Creationism: Biology Under Attack" The Nation, June 9, 1997
- "How 'Natural' Is Rape? Despite a Daffy New Theory, It's Not Just a Guy in Touch with His Inner Caveman" at the Wayback Machine (archived February 17, 2002), Time, January 31, 2000
- "Welcome to Cancerland", 2001 National Magazine Awardfinalist
- "A New Counterterrorism Strategy: Feminism", AlterNet, 2005
- "Fight for Your Right to Party" Time, December 18, 2006
- "My Unwitting Role in Acts of Torture" at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-06-30), The Guardian, February 22, 2009
- "Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?", The New York Times, August 9, 2009
- "Are Women Getting Sadder? Or Are We All Just Getting a Lot More Gullible?", Guernica, October 13, 2009
- "Smile! You've got cancer", The Guardian, January 2, 2010
- Death of a Yuppie Dream – The Rise and Fall of the Professional-Managerial Class February 12, 2013.
Awards
In 1980, Ehrenreich shared the
In 1998 the American Humanist Association named her "Humanist of the Year".[24]
In 2000, she received the Sidney Hillman Award for journalism for the Harper's article "Nickel and Dimed", which was later published as a chapter in her book of the same title.[25]
In 2002, she won a National Magazine Award for her essay "Welcome to Cancerland: A mammogram leads to a cult of pink kitsch", which describes Ehrenreich's own experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer, and describes what she calls the "breast cancer cult," which "serves as an accomplice in global poisoning – normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience."[26][27]
In 2004, she received the
In 2007, she received the "Freedom from Want" Medal, awarded by the Roosevelt Institute in celebration of "those whose life's work embodies FDR's Four Freedoms".[30]
Ehrenreich received a
In November 2018, Ehrenreich received the Erasmus Prize by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands for her work in investigative journalism.[31]
Personal life and family
Ehrenreich had one brother, Ben Alexander Jr., and one sister, Diane Alexander. When she was 35, according to the book Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, her mother died "from a likely suicide".[32] Her father died years later from Alzheimer's disease.[32]
Ehrenreich was married and divorced twice. She met her first husband,
Ehrenreich had two children with her first husband. Her daughter Rosa, born in 1970, was named after a great-grandmother and Rosa Luxemburg.[34] She is a Virginia-based law professor, national security and foreign policy expert and writer.[35] Ehrenreich's son Ben, born in 1972, is a novelist and a journalist in Los Angeles.[36]
Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the release of her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. This led to the award-winning article "Welcome to Cancerland," published in the November 2001 issue of Harper's Magazine. The piece inspired the 2011 documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc..[37]
Ehrenreich lived in
References
- ^ "The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary". Retrieved May 12, 2016.
- ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara. "About Barbara". barbaraehrenreich.com. Archived from the original on June 23, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class: Barbara Ehrenreich Interview Transcript". Booknotes (C-SPAN). Interviewed by Lamb, Brian. October 18, 1989. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara. "My Family Values Atheism: Acceptance speech upon receiving the 1999 Freethought Heroine Award". Freedom From Religion Foundation. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
- ^ a b Edwards, Ivana (October 17, 1993). "Barbara Ehrenreich's Writing Attracts an Attentive Audience". The New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ McDermott, Ted (May 24, 2018). "Montana Tech officially renamed Montana Technological University". The Montana Standard. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
- ^ a b "Ehrenreich, Barbara. Papers of Barbara Ehrenreich, 1922–2007 (inclusive), 1963–2007 (bulk): A Finding Aid". December 16, 2011. Archived from the original on December 16, 2011. Retrieved December 16, 2020.
- ^ The School of Life. Retrieved May 12, 2016.
- ProQuest 734005592
- ^ a b c d e f "Papers of Barbara Ehrenreich, 1922–2007 (inclusive), 1963–2007 (bulk): A Finding Aid". Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Archived from the original on December 16, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ Nader's Top Endorsers From 2000 Urge "Swing States" Support for Kerry Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Common Dreams, September 14, 2004
- ^ "Unstoppable Obama", ehrenreich.blogs.com. February 14, 2008
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
- ^ "About". Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Archived from the original on September 21, 2015.
- ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara (July 22, 2004). "Owning Up To Abortion". The New York Times. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
- ISBN 9780231071949.
The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks..
- ^ "Books Briefly Noted: Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich". New Yorker. September 2005. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
- ^ "About United Professionals". United Professionals. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved October 4, 2008.
- ^ "Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich". www.scienceandreason.ca. Association for science and reason. February 13, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2018.
- ^ Cohen, Patricia (October 9, 2009). "Author's Personal Forecast: Not Always Sunny, but Pleasantly Skeptical". Reviews. The New York Times. Retrieved December 21, 2018.
- ^ "National Magazine Awards Database of Past Winners and Finalists". American Society of Magazine Editors. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ a b "Columnist Biography: Barbara Ehrenreich". The New York Times. July 1, 2004. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ Dowie, Mark (1979). "The Corporate Crime of the Century". Mother Jones. Archived from the original on October 6, 2012. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Humanist of the Year". American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on May 22, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism". Sidney Hillman Foundation. Archived from the original on May 3, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Harper's Magazine Awards and Honors" (PDF). Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara (November 2001). "Welcome To Cancerland". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the original on June 9, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Barbara Ehrenreich At McGill, Thursday, Nov. 18, 6:30". McGill University. November 14, 2010. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Puffin Foundation: Puffin Nation Award For Creative Citizenship". Puffin Foundation. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Four Freedoms Award: Celebrating those whose life's work embodies FDR's Four Freedoms". Roosevelt Institute. Archived from the original on July 25, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ "Press release: 2018 Erasmus Prize awarded to Barbara Ehrenreich". www.erasmusprijs.org. Stichting Praemium Erasmianum. March 1, 2018. Retrieved June 15, 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-58005-176-7.
- ^ "Bitters and Cream (personal site)". John Ehrenreich. Archived from the original on September 10, 2011. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
- ^ Sherman, Scott (June 2003). "Class Warrior: Barbara Ehrenreich's Singular Crusade". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on February 9, 2013. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
- ^ "Rosa Brooks". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on August 21, 2012. Retrieved May 12, 2016.
- ^ "Meet The Los Angeles Writer Who Beat The New Yorker, GQ, And The Atlantic". Business Insider. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
- Canadian Press. Archivedfrom the original on January 1, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara. "Huffington Post Biography". The Huffington Post. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- ^ Dreier, Peter (September 7, 2022). "Barbara Ehrenreich Made Socialist Ideas Sound Like Common Sense". Jacobin. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
External links
- Official website
- Barbara Ehrenreich's blog
- Interview with Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker, March 21, 2020.
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Papers of Barbara Ehrenreich, 1922–2007 (inclusive), 1963–2007 (bulk). Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
- Barbara Ehrenreich at IMDb