Category: Work Won’t Love You Back

“You’re a freelancer, right?” We’re two minutes into our conversation and essayist Sarah Jaffe has already warned us from the way I talk about work that I don’t know what a payroll is. I confess to her straight away that I was not, am not, and will not be one of those people who claim to 
“love their job” above all else, and that’s precisely what she talks about in ‘‘Trabajar. Un amor no correspondido’’ (Capitán Swing, 2024), a book that examines why “doing what you like” is a recipe for exploitation that generates a new tyranny of work in which we happily accept tasks that take over our lives. We have grown up with the idea that work is not just a way to make a living; but a vocation that completes us and that we love. Jaffe assures us that this lie prevents us from seeing the cracks in the labor system and drives us to fall into formulas of exploitation and accept precarious working conditions in the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, things will change…

Read the whole thing at Elle Spain

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” goes a popular saying. But Sarah Jaffe says that’s a lie. The American writer and journalist has spent years specializing in labor struggles and political power, exploring how work affects our daily lives and our ways of understanding human life. She has worked for outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Nation, and has also been a waitress, a bicycle mechanic, and a social media consultant, cleaned up trash, served ice cream, and explained Soviet communism to high school students. She now devotes her working time to her column in The Progressive and co-hosts the podcasts Belabored and Heart Reacts. Her book 
Trabajar: un amor no correspondido (Capitán Swing) has just been translated into Spanish.

Read the whole thing at Ethic

That work absorbs us, that we no longer have fair wages, that housing prices are rising, but not salaries; that young people are lazy; that nobody wants to work; that we are better off now than before. The discourse on working conditions in this century in the Western world is disparate, however, Sarah Jaffe has a very clear position. She arrives in Spain with her book Trabajar, un amor no correspondido (Capitán Swing) and exposes how the system makes things difficult for the working class.

Read the whole thing at La Voz de Galicia

Since Sarah Jaffe published Trabajar: Un amor no correspondido Captain Swing), three of its editors have left their jobs. Although they have generally continued in the publishing world at a slower pace, one of them has opted for viticulture. The New Orleans-based journalist tells the story perhaps to point out that the first English edition of the book, published in the middle of the pandemic, was 
a premonition of what was about to happen around the world .

Read the whole thing at El Confidencial

Essayist Sarah Jaffe (Norwood, Massachusetts, 44 years old) knows the world of work and all its variants from top to bottom. She has been a waitress, repaired bicycles and has been a social media consultant; she has sold ice cream, cleaned and explained Soviet communism to high school students. Her book ‘Trabajar. Un amor no correspondido’ (Capitan Swing publishing house) is a slap in the face that opens our eyes to fictions such as love for the profession or myths such as that of the ‘white working class’. The working class is a concept that evolves, and today takes the form of immigrant carers who are exploited in the dependency assistance sector.

Read the whole thing at El Pais