Author Bio

Peter Scheckner, Professor of Literature at Ramapo College, is the author of Class, Politics, and the Individual: A Study of the Major Works of D.H. Lawrence and editor of a collection of English Chartist poetry.

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M. C. Boyes is assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2006 she won the Tennessee Commission for the Arts Individual Fiction Fellowship. Her creative writing has appeared in Fiction International, Rhino, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Spoon River.

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Main Description

The Way We Work reveals that a seismic change has occurred in the workplace since the appearance in 1974 of Studs Terkel's Working. Terkel's subjects, despite their alienation, had a sense of themselves as workers and felt that in the workplace they were part of a community.The people Terkel interviewed were highly class conscious in a way that today seems radical and even anachronistic. By contrast, while some of the narrators in The Way We Work feel passionate about their work, others are barely conscious that they are "workers." In transit from one job to another, some workers find it hard to take either their co-workers or their job situation too much to heart. One pronoun rarely used by the narrators of the works in this anthology is "we."

Each of the 43 pieces in The Way We Work represents a voice that is idiosyncratic, ironic, or humorous. Alongside such acclaimed writers as Tom Wolfe, Rick Bass, Barbara Garson, Ha Jin, Charles Bowden, Erica Funkhouser, Allan Gurganus, Catherine Anderson, Philip Levine, Edward Conlon, and Mona Simpson, appear the narratives of little-known writers. No other collection of writings about contemporary work in this country showcases the personal accounts of employees from a creative, literary perspective.

These writings address such current issues as the effects of globalization, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and the weakening of unions, as well as a general sense of worker disengagement in the workplace. Speaking in multiple genres, the men and women whose voices are collected here run the whole gamut of the workplace. From an executive at an office products company to a migrant fruit picker to a stripper to a doctor to a cleaner of garbage trucks, The Way We Work captures, with passion and honesty, the experiences of a myriad of workers.

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Reviews

It's a book that readers will love to pick up again and again, particularly if they have to smuggle the book onto the factory line, behind the counter, or into their cubicle to read it.
--ForeWord Magazine

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I'd like to express the sense of excitement that The Way We Work generates in me as a teacher at a working-class university, where students and instructors alike would greatly benefit from the use of this book in introductory writing courses. The Way We Work goes far beyond the limits of the multicultural readers that stress human commonalties in a more sentimental, celebratory, and merely experiential way. The emphasis on work takes us to a core conception of what it means to be human and reminds us of the pressures exerted on our humanity by our present-day social and economic arrangements.
--Barbara Foley, Rutgers-Newark

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The Way We Work surprised and delighted me at every turn, because of the sheer strangeness it unpacks from the dailiness and (often) stupidity of work, and even more because of the the writing's freshness. People who teach about work will want to put this book on the syllabus, right alongside Studs Terkel.
--Richard Ohmann

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Table of Contents

CHICKEN 81 by Sarah L. Courteau

Nonfiction

Occupation: Industrial Poultry Farm Worker

ORIENTATION by Daniel Orozco

Fiction

Occupation: Office Worker

THAT JOY THAT PACKS THE BODY by Andrew Miller

Poetry

Occupation: Tuna Canner

HATCHET MAN by Leo Parascondola

Nonfiction

Occupation: Bus Driver

COINS by Mona Simpson

Fiction

Occupation: Nanny

MORRISON'S, 1968 by Rick Campbell

Poetry

Occupation: Restaurant Worker

THE MIDNIGHT TOUR by Marcus Laffey

Nonfiction

Occupation: Police Officer

DIRTY TALK by Amanda Scheiderer

Nonfiction

Occupation: Stripper

WOMANHOOD by Catherine Anderson

Poetry

Occupation: Textile Worker

CONCRETE MEN by Dan Pope

Fiction

Occupation: Construction Laborer

WE WHO HAVE ESCAPED by Leigh Hancock

Poetry

Occupation: Various-Secretary, Carpet Layer, Food Service Worker, Factory Worker, Custodial Staff

TORCH SONG by Charles Bowden

Nonfiction

Occupation: Reporter

WHEN I WAS ELEVEN by Ed McManis

Poetry

Occupation: Unknown

MCDONALD'S, WE DO IT ALL FOR YOU by Barbara Garson

Nonfiction

Occupation: Food Service Worker

THE RIVER BOTTOM RANCH by Marcial Gonzalez

Fiction

Occupation: Farm Worker/Fruit Picker

ONE WOMAN WATCHING by Linda Kantner

Nonfiction

Occupation: Social Worker

JOBBED by Philip Levine

Nonfiction

Occupation: Assistant Handy Man and Delivery Boy

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR BOSS by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Poetry

Occupation: Generalized Boss

THE TROUBLE WITH GUIDEBOOKS by J. C. Ross

Fiction

Occupation: Assistant Bookstore Manager

DEBT by Will Watson

Poetry

Occupation: Steel Factory Worker

THE SUICIDAL FREEZER Unit by Tom Wolfe

Fiction

Occupation: Picker/Box Loader

PHOTOGRAPH: MIGRANT WORKER, PARLIER CALIFORNIA, 1967 by Larry Levis

Poetry

Occupation: Migrant Fruit Picker

AFTER COWBOY CHICKEN CAME TO TOWN by Ha Jin

Fiction

Occupation: Food Service Worker

JOB by Erika Meitner

Poetry

Occupation: Office Worker

LIVELIHOOD by Lou Fisher

Fiction

Occupation: Unemployed Office Worker

THE FIREMAN by Rick Bass

Fiction

Occupation: Volunteer Fireman

WHITE BOOTS by William Pitt Root

Poetry

Occupation: Coal Miner

THE DOG by Nathan Long

Fiction

Occupation: Migrant Fruit Picker

AFTER GARBAGE MEN by Jay Snodgrass

Poetry

Occupation: Truck Cleaner

THE WOMEN WHO CLEAN FISH by Erica Funkhouser

Poetry

Occupation: Fish Cleaner

APPOINTED ROUTE by Ben Satterfield

Fiction

Occupation: Mailman

THE BASEMENT by Paula Champa

Fiction

Occupation: Temporary Office Worker

LABOR #1 by Clay Blancett

Poetry

Occupation: Carpenter

SENIORS' LAST HOUR (ALCOA ALUMINUM, NORTH PLANT, ALCOA, TN) by Richard Joines

Poetry

Occupation: Factory Worker

AT WORK by Mary Malinda Polk

Nonfiction

Occupation: Legal Secretary

IF LANGUAGE WAS A HOUSE OF BEING by Darren Morris

Poetry

Occupation: Technical Editor and Writer

HE'S AT THE OFFICE by Allan Gurganus

Fiction

Occupation: Office Worker

BY APPOINTMENT by Lisa Buchanan

Fiction

Occupation: Sex Worker

SPINNER, COTTON MILL, 1908-1909 by Jorn Ake

Poetry

Occupation: Textile Worker

JANE by Ambur Economou

Fiction

Occupation: Physician

QUITTING THE PAINT FACTORY by Mark Slouka

Essay

Occupation: Various

W by Shirlee Hoffman

Poetry

Occupation: All

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