by Jamie Passaro

Barbara Ehrenreich is a political essayist and social critic who tackles a brave and diverse range of issues in books and magazine articles. She is the author or co-author of twelve books including Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class and, most recently, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. She has written for dozens of magazines, including Ms., Harper’s, The Nation, The Progressive, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times Magazine. Her forthcoming book is called Nickel and Dimed: Surviving in Low-Wage America. She recently led a workshop, Writing About Poverty, for the literary nonfiction program’s Writing About... series. She was interviewed for the Literary Nonfiction Writer by LNF Master’s student Jamie Passaro.—Flash ed.

Q: Many of us are trying to break into the professional world of freelancing. Do you remember your first professionally published article?

A: It was in a professional biological journal. I was a graduate student in biology, ended up getting a Ph.D., and the first things I ever published were in the professional literature, all in the passive voice, by the way. Which was sort of required. I didn’t have any intention of becoming a writer. It kind of crept up on me because, after the Ph.D., I decided not to become a research scientist and just wanted to be involved in social change activities and often ended up doing writing as part of that work. It could be a leaflet, could be an investigative article published in a small newsletter, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer for quite a while.

Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a science background?

A: The disadvantage is that I didn’t spend years studying history or political science or something that would have come in more handy. But I’m not sorry really. It gives me a way of seeing the world, an analytical strength. Another thing: I’m not afraid of anything technical. I have the feeling, which I should hope every journalist develops, I can learn anything. . . . It does shape the way I see the world, sometimes in odd ways. Looking for mechanisms, looking for ways things fit together. A lot of my analogies and metaphors come from science.

Q: How did you break into writing for magazines like Ms. and Harper’s?

A: The first national magazine I ever wrote for was Ms. magazine in the late 1970s. I had a sort of a specialty at the time which I can no longer claim, which was health care issues—both health policy and sort of anything health related. So they had asked me to do a women’s health-related article.

Q: Would you encourage beginning writers to develop specialty areas?

A: It’s not a bad idea. It gives you more of an entree when you don’t have a big stack of clips. And it’s important to learn something deeply. You can always branch out.

Q: Where do you get your story ideas?

A: From two sources: Something that makes me angry—and a lot of things make me angry— so there’s a lot of material. And the other source, the other inspiration, is curiosity. Why’d I write about war? Well, I certainly have emotional feeling about war—negative ones. But also I was really, really curious.

Q: Is it difficult to keep your political views and your integrity and still publish in the mainstream?

A: Yes, it sure is. It’s frustrating. News has become more like entertainment. Once-staid news magazines, which will go unnamed, have become more frivolous and less interested in serious analysis. There are problems writing about poverty. The mainstream media are not very interested. From 1991 to about 1997 I was a regular essayist in Time, meaning I had an essay in about once a month. But then a new administration came in about 1997 and they started rejecting the pieces I did on things like poverty, inequality, capital punishment, and only wanting me to do things on Monica, Princess Di, things like that. So, I won’t work for them on a regular basis now.

Q: Is it hard to write about issues you feel so passionate about?

A: My traditional way of dealing with that is humor. Humor actually can be a way of expressing a lot of aggression. I mean, satirical humor. And I used it for years. Nobody wants to hear a rant.

Q: How do you balance your work writing books and writing for magazines?

A: I find it sort of essential psychologically. The great thing about journalism is the changes of subject and new challenges all the time. But that’s also the problem with it. And I like having a long-term project too, which has continuity and which I can always dip back into and sometimes devote months of my time to. So I like having both.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: There are two books. One will be about these low-wage jobs. One chapter of that appeared in Harper’s (“Nickel and Dimed”). The other book I haven’t found a good way to describe. It is the role of festivity, and communal festivity, in social and political movements. That makes it sound drier than it actually is. It goes all the way into rituals and occasions for ecstasy, ecstatic behavior. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s hard to research.

Q: Other advice for beginning writers?

A: Writing is, first of all, something you do for yourself. Don’t get caught up into the marketability of everything and just hustling to make money. Now, that’s part of it, but I think it’s very important to have a part of your writing be experimental, be perhaps private and something that may take years. . . . You get hollowed out real fast if you feel this is just something that’s a trick you do to earn some money.

—This interview was originally published on the website for Literary Nonfiction at UO.