Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Throughout this volume, contributors address the dignity and sense of respect that work can bring to one’s life while also confronting exploitative labor practices, including below-subsistence wages, the abuse of migrant workers desperate for a better and more prosperous life, and the commodification of the human body.

Richard Russo brings to light the dignity that employment brings to the lives of working-class people in his essay on Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency. He suggests that Trump appealed to so many people without college degrees because they felt seen for the first time in a long while. They resent the denigration of their work as laborers and are angry about the disappearance of good-paying working-class jobs. These are the jobs about which Timothy Egan writes in his essay on Seattle’s changing demographics and the downward social mobility of the dockworkers who could once afford to live comfortably in the now-gentrified city. RS Deeran’s short story about working-class protagonist Tim, who can barely afford his rent, and the foreclosed-on homes where he mows lawns addresses the same problem. Banks profit from the foreclosures, while Tim earns a mere $10 for each lawn he mows. There is little social mobility, and systemic inequality combined with lack of opportunities often trap people in these kinds of circumstances.

Working class, however, is a term that applies to a diverse body of people. Racial and ethnic minorities likewise face insurmountable obstacles to social mobility that are fueled by classist, racist, and xenophobic attitudes. The economically disgruntled voters from Russo’s essay are primarily white men, like the unemployed upper-Michigan men in Roxane Gay’s “How.” Russo writes, “Feeling angry, undervalued, and ignored, they don’t seem to grasp that these are not new feelings. They’re just new to them. American blacks and Latinos and LGBT folks have been feeling the same way for a long time” (58).

Many of the works in Tales of Two Americas interrogate the intersections of multiple identities and the way that classism, racism, and xenophobia operate in conjunction. Indeed, many contributors write about the very people Trump attacked: immigrants and people of color. They also toil under exploitative labor conditions but have added to their plight discriminatory attitudes that make their lives difficult. These attitudes reinforce structural inequality and, in some cases, literally lead to death. Mun’s Korean immigrant characters are so filled with hopelessness that they resort to suicide while Rebecca Solnit identifies gentrification as the cause of Alex Nieto’s death at police hands.

Herrera’s poem alludes to the dangerous conditions that migrants face when crossing the southern border. Engels writes about the racism and resentment that Hispanics in Miami encounter even while white residents co-opt their language and cuisines. Natalie Diaz laments the plight of Indigenous Americans, who make up a miniscule percentage of the US population but are killed by police at a much higher rate. Indigenous women are victims of sexual assault and murder at a higher rate than the general population. Sarah Smarsh’s “blood brother” literally sells his body for money so that he can survive even though he has regular employment. As a first-generation college graduate, he was not afforded the opportunities of networking upon graduation and did not know how to navigate the white-collar working world.

Collectively, these essays, short stories, and poems make clear that employment is essential to one’s sense of identity and dignity but that at the same time, work can be highly exploitative, and having a job does not equal being able to afford housing and necessities. Outsiders may see the people in these pieces as lazy, unworthy, or to blame for their circumstances when, in fact, the deck is stacked against them. Structural inequality can be insurmountable.