Guides: Good Sentences: Unemployment Clinic

Literary Sentences

Salaryman
By Krys Lee (Narrative, Winter 2005; requires free signup to access).
Then We Came to the End
By Joshua Ferris, Chapter 1 (2008)

On Being Fired Again
By Erin Belieu. Excerpted from One Above & One Below, 2001.
Calling Him Back from Layoff
By Bob Hicok. Excerpted from Insomnia Diary, 2004.
What Work Is
By Philip Levine, excerpted from What Work Is, 1992.
The Telephone Repairman
By Joseph Millard (The Writer's Almanac, November 8, 2003; excerpted from Overtime).
Domestic Work, 1937
By Natasha Trethewey (Library of Congress, excerpted from Domestic Work, 1999).
Company Men
By Jim Daniels, in Birth Marks (2013)
Born to Be Free
By Benjamin M. Friedman, The New York Review of Books (October 12, 2017)
Exit Interview
By Carrie Shipers, The Southern Review (Spring 2017)
The Halls
by Mark Halliday, Selfwolf (1999) via The Poetry Foundation

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Call Number: Writing Collection HD4918 .E375 2001

Publication Date: 2001
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Call Number: Writing Collection HD7287.96.U6 D47 2016

Publication Date: 2016
$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer
Call Number: Writing Collection and CCC Collection HC110.P6 E343 2016x, Electronic, and Electronic

Publication Date: 2016

Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich
Call Number: HD 5708.55 .U6 E47 2006

Publication Date: 2006

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Call Number: Writing Reserve PS3537.T3234 G8 2014

Publication Date: 2014

Breathless and Burdened
By Chris Hamby, The Center for Public Integrity. 3-part series. Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Part 1: Coal industry's go-to law firm withheld evidence of black lung, at expense of sick miners
Part 2: Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners' claims
Part 3: As experts recognize new form of black lung, coal industry follows familiar pattern of denial
Pace is the New Peril
By Alexandra Berzon, Las Vegas Sun (March 30, 2008)
Working Anything but 9 to 5
Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents with Hours of Chaos.
By Jodi Kantor, The New York Times (August 13, 2014).

Shortly after this article was published, Starbucks (featured in the article) changed its policies.
TV's Dwindling Middle Class
Money worries and striving were part of the mainstream sitcom. Now most characters exist in a classless world.
By Wesley Morris, The New York Times Magazine (April 27, 2016)

The dignity deficit: Reclaiming Americans’ sense of purpose
By Arthur C. Brooks, The American Enterprise Institute (February 13, 2017)

The New-Boy Network
What do job interviews really tell us? By Malcolm Gladwell (May 29, 2000).
Work Works
By David Shipler.

Getting On: Why Ageism Never Gets Old
By Tad Friend, The New Yorker (November 13, 2017)

Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae
Erin N. Griswold, Solicitor General, No. 70-507 in the United States Supreme Court (California Department of Human Resources v. Java), 1970.