num_pages: 240
description: “A magnificent scholar… [with] a powerful vision and a subtle analysis at the same time… So much to offer.”—Dr. Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary“Maximillian Alvarez doesn’t just report; he listens like an organizer, and pulls the fundamental challenges of humanity from the people he interviews so that it’s never just about storytelling or setting a narrative. It’s about finding what really binds us together in those struggles so that we can fight our way forward with real love and solidarity.”—Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWAIn late 2020 and early 2021, at the height of the COVID pandemic, Maximillian Alvarez conducted a series of intimate interviews with workers of all stripes, from all around the US. He talked to them about their lives, their work, and their experiences living through a year when the world itself seemed to break apart. Filled with stories of struggle and strength, fear and loss, love and rage, The Work of Living is a deeply human history of one of the defining events of the 21st century told by the people who lived it.The narratives in these pages are at times meandering, sometimes funny or philosophical, occasionally punctured by pain and fear so deep that it hurts to read them. The workers interviewed range from Kyle, a sheet metal worker in Kentucky, to Mx. Pucks, a burlesque performer and producer in Seattle, to Nick, a gravedigger in New Jersey. As he does in his widely celebrated podcast, Working People, Alvarez makes a point of talking to those he interviews not just about their jobs but about their lives: where they come from, what their families are like, the memories they hold dear, their opinions about today’s thorny political questions.The people and stories in this book will help shape our collective historical understanding of the pandemic in a strikingly original and intimate fashion.
language: English
title: The Work of Living
publisher: OR Books