Working In The Shadows

Gabriel Thompson
December 2009     ISBN: 1568584083

What is it like to do the back-breaking work of immigrants? To find out, Gabriel Thompson spent a year working alongside Latino immigrants who initially thought he was either crazy or an undercover immigration agent. He stooped over lettuce fields in Arizona, and worked the graveyard shift at a chicken slaughterhouse in rural Alabama. He dodged taxis—not always successfully—as a bicycle delivery "boy" for an upscale Manhattan restaurant, and was fired from a flower shop by a boss who, he quickly realized, was nuts.

As one co-worker explained, "These jobs make you old quick." Back spasms occasionally kept Thompson in bed, where he suffered recurring nightmares involving iceberg lettuce and chicken carcasses. Combining personal narrative with investigative reporting, Thompson shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting and lax government enforcement—while telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants and desperate U.S. citizens alike, forced to live with chronic back pain in the pursuit of $8 an hour.

Gabriel Thompson writes for New York magazine, The Nation, The Brooklyn Rail and In These Times. The author of There's No José Here, he lives in New York City.