Yeung’s reporting achieves a balance rare in public interest journalism: She tells compelling stories that illustrate systemic problems without reducing people to mere players in a legal argument. She skillfully knits case studies into rigorous policy analysis. Most important, Yeung traces paths toward progress beyond merely raising awareness ... She also illustrates the high stakes her sources must consider before speaking about abuse ... Yeung’s book nonetheless helps break that silence ... Though it was begun well before the latest wave of the Me Too movement, In a Day’s Work nonetheless lands at a perfect time to inform the conversation.
Even while describing experiences many publications might package as trauma porn, Yeung never lets larger structures out of sight: The story here is not about individual pathologies but the power differentials that enable abusers to act on their impulses and get away with it ... As pundits opine about #MeToo in the pages of every major newspaper, Yeung does something better: Rather than give her own view on how to solve the scourge of sexual violence, she shows us what these workers themselves have been doing to address it ... The risks are too high for most undocumented, low-wage workers. And even if they do speak, who will listen? This is why Yeung’s framing is so critical: What helps the women in this book is not speech alone, cathartic as it may be. It is the organizers around them, often low-wage immigrant workers themselves, who ensure that survivors can speak without fear—and that others will hear them ... In a Day’s Work shows us how to stamp out sexual violence.
Bernice Yeung relates stories like Hernandez’s with candor and compassion in her new book, In a Day’s Work. She balances them with comprehensive research on labor law, rape and sexual assault legislation, and the additional burdens borne by undocumented women workers ... Though these stories are heartbreaking, the book ends on a hopeful note ... Yeung’s book provides crucial information and insight about this 'long-held open secret,' making it a must-read for union organizers, advocates, policy makers and legislators — and all of us.
...a bleak but much-needed addition to the literature on sexual harassment in the US ... In a Day’s Work suggests how the struggles of working-class women align with those of their sisters in the creative class. It offers an opportunity rarely found in our class-polarized society: to bring together women across economic levels around a single issue. What might make this opportunity hard to seize is that the outcome of sexual harassment is significantly different for women of varying social classes and occupations ... what Yeung’s book suggests primarily is that feminists don’t need a policy program first. Rather, we need unity, or, as we used to say, sisterhood ... Whatever else it involves, building a cross-class movement, as Yeung shows, will mean learning to stop unseeing the working women around us.
Yeung shares the illuminating and often shocking stories of harassment against low-wage, at-risk workers deemed vulnerable due to the nature of their immigration status and their dependence on their employment in order to support a family ... These compelling examples of exploitation and dehumanization represent a pattern of abuse and a silent epidemic affecting (mainly) female immigrant workers across the country ... A timely, intensely intimate, and relevant exposé on a greatly disregarded sector of the American workforce.
The author mitigates the difficult material by bringing humanity, empathy, and hope to each page ... Moments of indignation in Yeung’s writing feel completely justifiable ... The book concludes with guardedly hopeful descriptions of workplace training programs, government regulation, and union advocacy. Even more moving, however, is the sense of a reporter deeply committed to her sources and her material.
