Barbara Ehrenreich

American journalist and socialist feminist who immersed herself in minimum-wage labor to write Nickel and Dimed — and who wrote influential critiques of positive thinking ideology.

Nickel and Dimed: three months as a waitress, maid, and Walmart associate — a first-person account of the impossibility of surviving on minimum wage in America. Bright-Sided: positive thinking as ideology — the American obsession with optimism suppresses legitimate negative responses to unjust conditions.