Barbara Ehrenreich This Land Is Their Land Summary

The term “class” has long been a touchy subject that many American authors felt intimidated to approach. As a result, when This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation was published in 2008, the anger and sarcasm of Barbara Ehrenreich woke us up to the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Although I was impressed by the captivating writing style and the provocative approach of the author, her stereotypes towards the wealthy do more harm than good to the goal of reducing inequality.
This Land Is Their Land is Ehrenreich’s accusation of the wealthy, who transformed parts of America into private properties to satisfy their selfish desires. Through this polemical piece of writing, Ehrenreich attacked the situation without sugarcoating any dark corners, which is similar to her previous works such as Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in American and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. This Land Is Their Land is definitely not the essay to reach for on a relaxing Friday afternoon. I was impressed by the sarcastic anecdotes she included: “maybe I had wandered into a movie …show more content…
I expected Ehrenreich, as a person who experienced various levels of American society, to have approached this problem with a more objective perspective. The hatred she expressed was counterproductive, and the message from This Land Is Their Land would have been more convincing if the author had acknowledged the big picture rather than stood on one side and attacked the other side with such a negative