The biography of barbara ehrenreich

American writer and journalist (1941–2022)

Barbara Ehrenreich (, AIR-ən-rike;^[1]née Alexander; August 26, 1941 – September 1, 2022) was an American author and political activist.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist and the author of 21 books. Ehrenreich was best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a memoir of her three-month experiment surviving on a series of minimum-wage jobs.

She was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and the Erasmus Prize.

Early life

Ehrenreich was born to Isabelle (née Oxley) and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town".^[2] In an interview on C-SPAN, she characterized her parents as "strong union people" with two family rules: "never cross a picket line a