Getting By on the Minimum: The Lives of Working-Class Women

The reviews and features collected in John Freedman's Moscow Performances bring to life the diversity, energy, and imagination of Russian theater as few books have done before. While focusing on the work of Moscow's leading directors - Pyotr Fomenko, Kama Ginkas, Valery Fokin, Anatoly Vasilyev, Konstantin Raikin, Sergei Zhenovach, Yury Lyubimov, and many others - also included in its review are key productions by many of the renowned guests who bring their art to the Russian capital. Essays on St. Petersburg's Lev Dodin (of the Maly Drama Theatre), Lithuania's Eimuntas Nekrosius, Georgia's Robert Sturua, and Germany's Peter Stein confirm that Moscow's position as a "theatrical mecca" has not diminished since Anatoly Lunacharsky coined the phrase in the 1920s. In addition to recording Freedman's immediate and opinionated responses to Moscow stage developments in the 1990s, Moscow Performances contains a wealth of information about the struggles and occasional triumphs of a new generation of talented but as yet unknown playwrights, the successes of the best actors, and the social and financial trends which have had such an impact on Russian theatre in the post-Soviet period.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 The Meaning of Work and Class; Chapter 3 Life on the Job; Chapter 4 Can't Get No Satisfaction; Chapter 5 What Work Means; Chapter 6 Work (f)or Family; Chapter 7 The Work of Carring; Chapter 8 Growing Up Poor in Postwar America; Chapter 9 Dropping Out; Chapter 10 What Will I Be?; Chapter 11 Getting By on the Minimum;

About the Author :
Jennifer Johnson is a Research Scientist in the Department of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She is the Co-Principal Investigator of a two-year research project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Review :
"Johnson provides a compelling and informative portrait of the power of social class in the daily lives of women. Her excellent study tells us why the starting point for understanding work and family relations is social class." -- Frank Furstenberg, author of Managing to Make It:Urban Families and Adolescent Success "Jennifer Johnson's class analysis of women's working lives brings fresh insights to understanding gendered choices and constraints. Her detailed portraits capture the inequalities between women. These narratives demonstrate why workers' rights need to be protected and expanded and how family-friendly legislation can help working-class families do more than just get by." -- Mary Romero, author of Maid in the USA "Getting By on the Minimum opens a much-needed window into the lives of the ordinary women doing the ordinary work that keeps our society rolling along, showing how balancing job and family demands is a physical and economic struggle for them. The hidden injuries of class and gender emerge starkly here, but the voices of the women themselves also convey their strengths." -- Myra Marx Ferree, co-author of Controversy and Coalition: TheNew Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change "Getting By on the Minimum is a worthy 21st century addition to Lillian Rubin's classic, Worlds of Pain. Itdramatically captures working-class women's voices andexperiences on every page. This book offers the reader areal grasp of contemporary American women's varied anddivergent life paths." -- Phyllis Moen, author of Women'sTwo Roles: A Contemporary Dilemma "The book follows a style similar to Studs Terkel's Working and Lillian Rubin's World of Pain in that the actual works of the interviewees are used, giving the reader the impression of being directly spoken to. But Johnson's study is especially meaningful because she acknowledges the class distinction among working women and increases readers' awareness of these differences, as well as of all the workplace inequities women face. More in depth and insightful than Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeland Dimed, the book successfully lays out the complex array of reasons some women work at lower-paying jobs, from their perspective. Well-documented and containing an extensive bibliography, this should be required reading for certain sociology and women's studies courses and is recommended for all academic and large public libraries." -- Library Journal