Mary Retta at Bitch Media reviewed Work Won’t Love You Back (and I think this might be the best headline I’m gonna get). She writes:
In this way, Sarah Jaffe’s recent book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, released on January 26, is arriving at the perfect time. Told from the perspective of dozens of workers in various industries and fields including retail, education, and technology, Jaffe—the author of 2016’s Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt—examines and critiques the “labor of love” ideology that insists if we’re passionate about work, we’re not working at all. Each of the book’s chapters examines a particular professional industry where Jaffe both interviews workers within those fields and analyzes what labor has historically looked like in the field. The work is bookended by an introduction and a conclusion that both examine the themes of labor and love more conceptually, urging the reader to consider whether they really “love” their job or if capitalism has conditioned them to. Though the book has many strengths, Jaffe’s greatest success is her ability to deliver the final blow to the “dream job” narrative that has pervaded mainstream cultural norms for years.
Read the whole thing at Bitch.