11 Banned Books by Women to Read Right Now

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8.) Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich

What it’s about

Undercover journalist Barbara Ehrenreich set out to investigate the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on the working poor in the United States. Between 1998 and 2000, she took on some of the least desirable low-wage work she could find. Throughout the book, she attacks the notion the low-wage jobs require unskilled labor, or that the poor could easily pull themselves out of their circumstances if only they would try to do so. Ehrenreich describes the mind-numbing and degrading conditions that workers must face in order to collect a paltry paycheck.

Why it was banned or challenged

Challenges often focus on the book’s supposed socialist leanings. Nickel and Dimed is heavily critical of many aspects of American capitalism, as well as the social structures that force poor or working class people to live without financial security or social well-being.

Other challenges complained about profane language, hostility to Christianity, and its “faddish” nature, which was of “no moral value”. In 2010, the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas restricted minor’s access to the book after Kansans for Common Sense argued that it was “harmful to minors under state law”.

Why you should read it

Ehrenreich offers up an important critique of the American job market. Even fifteen years after its publication, Nickel and Dimed remains relevant. Whether or not you agree with Ehrenreich’s conclusions, it is a nonfiction account that has influenced many people’s understanding of modern American culture and economics.