Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed?

Question

I'm teaching this book next semester in my freshman composition class, and I always like my students to view a film to go along with whatever book they read. Any suggestions for films that could be compared/contrasted with this book? I was thinking of that documentary about Wal-Mart ...

Answer 1

There is a new movie coming out with Will Smith where he plays a homeless man trying to raise a son on the streets. It's based on a true story. If you're able to take your kids to a matinee, that might be interesting.

I don't really know how you would structure a compare/contrast essay around this theme unless you found another personal account of working minimum-wage jobs. It would be hard for students to compare/contrast Ehrenreich's experiences to factual information about Walmart. That's why the Will Smith movie would be good. It looks at another personal take on live below the poverty line in America.

Answer 2

I really appreciate your way of introducing the subject to the students With a little grounding into the background students would find it easier to understand the subjectmatter. However, our pictures are highly abstracted and present the matter in a melodramatic way which really does not help to have a real idea of the problem in the book of Barbara Ehrenreich. If I were you I would take the students, by batches, actually to scenes (workers' colonies etc,,encorage the students to actually interview some of the inmates to get a first-hand knowledge of the background. That will make a lasting impression on their minds.I believe your students are from the upper strata and this meeting and mingling would help in setting right their perspectives which tend to get rather askewed by their non-exposure.Now the very project of teaching Nickel and Dimed in such a class is an imaginative step but it would be still better to take the students to the scene of occurence. Otherwise never haging any brush with the stark realities tend to persuade them to feel that the matters in the books are just plays of imagination.A mother mixing floure with water to produe a milk-life effect to delude her son must necessarily appear as an abstraction to a student coming from a class where milk is wasted. Anyway the practice you adopt is really imaginative .Keep it up and consider my suggestions if you find them constructive.

Answer 3

I was tutoring in college last year, and someone suggested the film Ruby in Paradise, starring Ashley Judd. The main character is holding down a minimum-wage job in Florida.

Maybe the movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore might do, too.

Answer 4

My ultra left-wing college professor showed The Corporation which did not make a whole lot of sense but it did further her agenda. Minium wage is not meant to be a living wage so I do not know what the surprise was when she could not make it. You could email my professor who would love to give you movie ideas @ [e-mail].