Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty

by Jennifer M. Silva

What does it mean to grow up today as working-class young adults? How does the economic and social instability left in the wake of neoliberalism shape their identities, their understandings of the American Dream, and their futures?

Coming Up Short illuminates the transition to adulthood for working-class men and women. Moving away from easy labels such as the "Peter Pan generation," Jennifer Silva reveals the far bleaker picture of how the erosion of traditional markers of adulthood-marriage, a steady job, a house of one's own-has changed what it means to grow up as part of the post-industrial working class. Based on one hundred interviews with working-class people in two towns-Lowell, Massachusetts, and Richmond, Virginia-Silva sheds light on their experience of heightened economic insecurity, deepening inequality, and uncertainty about marriage and family. Silva argues that, for these men and women, coming of age means coming to terms with the absence of choice. As possibilities and hope contract, moving into adulthood has been re-defined as a process of personal struggle-an adult is no longer someone with a small home and a reliable car, but someone who has faced and overcome personal demons to reconstruct a
transformed self. Indeed, rather than turn to politics to restore the traditional working class, this generation builds meaning and dignity through the struggle to exorcise the demons of familial abuse, mental health problems, addiction, or betrayal in past relationships. This dramatic and largely unnoticed shift reduces becoming an adult to solitary suffering, self-blame, and an endless seeking for signs of progress.

This powerfully written book focuses on those who are most vulnerable-young, working-class people, including African-Americans, women, and single parents-and reveals what, in very real terms, the demise of the social safety net means to their fragile hold on the American Dream.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Contemporary, Activism, Psychology, Cultural

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Interesting sociological examination related to working-class adulthood. Jennifer Silva did a nice job interviewing a relatively diverse set of adults on their challenges related to class and making ends meet in the United States. She raises important points about neoliberalism and how an unforgiving economy can make people feel like their money struggles are their own fault instead of the fault of the broader society and economic system.

I give this book 3.5 stars instead of a higher rating because the book did come out in 2013 and some of its arguments are a bit dated and/or well-established by this point (which isn’t the author’s fault). Indeed, I feel like younger generations in the U.S. have been more critical of capitalism and neoliberalism which reflects a greater awareness of the ideas in Coming Up Short. I also think Silva could have done a more rigorous analysis of the intersection between individual mental health and internalizing the effects of an unforgiving economy. While I agree that people can look inward at themselves instead of outward at the system, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues are complex and can be affected by both external and internal factors.

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the book version of Silva's recent sociology dissertation at Virginia. Her study examines the experiences of 100 working class young adults as they attempt to engage with the US economy in the years after the financial crisis of 2008. The methodology appears to be qualitative - interviews based on an interview protocol. The statistics seem basic here.

Silva has a number of really interesting findings that all focus on the "coming of age" stories of the participants. The basic result that is most interesting to me is that while these youth must face the current jobs crisis among working class people, they maintain a frame of reference and norms that are consistent with more traditional work place norms. The two sets of norms - present and past -- and not consistent. This tension has ramifications for the emerging adult lives of these participants, including a reluctance to commit to interpersonal relations and a suspicion of most workplace relationships. Working class youth perceive high risks in their immediate situations. They also trust few people in confronting those risks. Moreover, members of the sample were likely to not just endure their tough times but also to justify their life results in terms of neoliberal norms of unattached individuality. In reading through these largely depressing results, one wonders what it will take to reorient this generation more positively towards the economy and government.

The author's judgments seem generally sound although this is not uniform in the book. The initial results on conflicting norms and a class structure seem very reasonable. The conclusions on the therapeutic bases for new identities in the current economic crisis are less plausible.

My biggest problem with the book is one common to all qualitative research -- namely how to distinguish between what the data are revealing and the author's interpretive framework in working through the interview results. Someone wise one said that "thick description is a license to kill". This suggests a need for clarifying what is author opinion and what is not. The sample is also not random at all, so it is hard to know what type of a cross-section that author really worked with. In defense of Silva, however, her results on the propensity of working class young people to accept and justify their hardships as personal failings rather than systemic inequities, is enlightening and rings true with my experiences.

It is a dissertation, so don't expect an exciting book, and there is a little too much reiteration and repetition and restating of key points along the way. This study is fairly well done, however, and relevant to a variety of policy issues, such as how assist the college careers of working class students without a family tradition in higher education.

Overall, this was an interesting book and worth the time.

[Denali · Rating 5 out of 5]

If all Jennifer Silva did was write a well-researched very readable academic work that would be enough to celebrate her book, but she's done much more than that. Coming up Short is both insightful and heartbreaking. The book draws on economics, sociology, demographics, and psychology to explore the decision-making and inner lives of young adults in an American economy where class mobility is limited and risk has been shifted from society to the individual.

There are plenty of news articles that treat the various issues Silva examines here without her thoughtful perspective and the strong, well supported arguments she makes. Why is marriage increasing in some demographics but not others? How are young people managing educational debt? How do unstable minimum wage jobs affect economic choices? Why do people often oppose social safety net programs that would help them? All of these are woven into the stories of the young men and women Silva interviewed for her project.

Finally Silva makes some thought provoking points about the power of personal narrative, the language of therapy/self improvement and how it shapes young people's mindsets that are essential for anyone working with youth or studying social media to ponder.

[Daniel R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of young working-class adults and what it means to come of age in today's society. One of the central themes is that traditional markers of adulthood such as education, employment, marriage, and children have been replaced with individual narratives that each person must explore and define, often without institutions helping to get the knowledge, skills, credentials, or money to better themselves. This self-reliance is set against a society that is shifting risk away from institutions and onto the individual, such as the move from pensions to 401Ks. As a result many of those interviewed felt completely alone, responsible for their own fates, and dependent on outside help at their own peril, leading to conscious decisions to not be romantically involved. The interviews are woven throughout the book with excellent context and well written discussion.

[Melissa Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 2013, "Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty," by Jennifer M. Silva, is a powerful work of nonfiction.

Silva interviews a hundred different working-class millennials (people in their twenties and early thirties working for minimum wage or slightly above minimum wage, many of them in the service industry, National Guard, or U.S. military active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan) between 2008/2009-2011/2012.

I loved this book. Emotionally, it's such a hard read, but I was so here for it.

I loved Silva's insights on the page, but I especially loved the insights this book inspired me to have, as I took in the information from the interviews as well as Silva's analysis.

This is such a great read! Highly recommended for anyone interested in classism, modern economics, and politics.

Five stars.

[Jeremy Arimado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insights into deconstructing the narratives that working class millenials project on themselves to create the identity needed to cope and move forward within a neoliberal world order.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Jobs for life have disappeared, obliterated by a technologically advanced and global capitalism that exalts labor market flexibility above all else. In turn, the institutions of marriage, religion, and family that once anchored working-class lives have shattered into ill-fitting pieces that each individual must consciously put back together on his or her own." -Jennifer Silva

How do you define the American Dream?

Home ownership? If you work hard, you can get ahead? Your children achieving more or living more comfortably than you had?

Jennifer Silva’s Coming Up Short explores what adulthood looks like for the working class in our current moment, one marked by both uncertainty and instability. She illustrates the lived experience of those who join the military because they struggle to find work, those who move back in with their parents when they should be forging their own paths, and those struggling to pay back student loans or make their monthly car payments.

These are working class adults who might be $80,000 in debt and bringing home $275 per week from their job at Dunkin Donuts. Adults who were told the only way to secure their future was to earn a degree, while the costs of earning that degree have skyrocketed.

Almost inherent in every article criticizing millennials is this unwritten expectation of a college degree, a steady job with rising wages, and a safety net to fall back on only if you need it – but as Silva describes, that’s pre-millennialist nostalgia, not the reality for today’s working class earning a paycheck working in food service, the retail sector, hospitality, or serving their communities in the military, law enforcement, or firefighting. The reality of those struggling in today’s economy, rife with billboards that advertise payday loans and approval regardless of one’s credit is one of powerlessness, confusion, and betrayal by our precarious and sometimes bewildering labor market, as well as our governmental and educational institutions – underpinned by the feeling that you are on your own, wholly responsible for your own fate and your own success.

"[T]he post-industrial generation is forced to continuously grapple with flux and contingency, bending and adapting to the demands of the labor market..."

Our economy is one "devoted to the short-term and flexible," often leading to a general lack of stability or predictability, rife with part-time, low wage and contingency work and long stretches of unemployment. And that has its repercussions. Here are just a few of them that Silva explores.

DEBT: In 2007, over 1 in 4 low-income households were making debt payments in excess of 40% of their income, as opposed to only 3.8% by high-income households.

WAGES: Since 1973, real wages for the working class have declined 12% for those with a high school diploma, and by 26% for those without one. Also since the 1970s, the top 20% of earners have captured 75% of income gains.

FAMILY: Young working class adults today are waiting longer to get married. They’re also less likely than their Baby Boomer counterparts to stay married or to have children. In 2008, a greater percentage of births were to women over the age of 35 than to teenagers, and in 2006 nearly 40% of births were to unmarried mothers, up from less than 5% in 1960.

MOVING BACK HOME: In 2009, nearly 50% of working class adults ages 18-24 lived at home with their parents, up from 35% in 1960.

Racial resentment, too, spikes when a majority feels minorities receive more assistance from the government or preference in the labor market where they’re told over and over that it’s on them to be successful, that it’s every man for himself. If they have to survive on their own, then everyone else should too – and harsh boundaries are drawn against those who are perceived as unable to make it on their own. This is why they’re so willing to embrace neoliberalism as a commonsense solution to a bewildering economy, things like increased privatization, deregulation of industry, rejection of universal healthcare or other social welfare programs, etc. This is also why the concepts of meritocracy and individualism rule the day – even when the average working-class adult doesn’t always reap the rewards of that system. Others shouldn’t demand something-for-nothing when they, themselves, can’t also get that something goes the logic.

This could also be why distrust in government is higher than ever. Elected officials rail against so-called waste, fraud, and abuse and – yet – large corporations openly flout our tax laws and some of the same companies that relied on our government for a bailout during the Great Recession later criticized our government for regulations that “unfairly curtail” their profits (e.g., fees on debit cards).

Silva argues that self-reliance and personal responsibility are “cultural scripts” resulting from experiences of betrayal, uncertainty, and a severed social contract, and that the “commonsense solutions” promised by neoliberalism is the result of a deep distrust in our institutions and, consequently, a belief that it is in our best interest to live in a society that privatizes risk and prioritizes the individual over the collective.

Overall, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty was an interesting read. I will say, it’s fairly academic in style. It’s not the narrative style that might’ve better illustrated her thesis. Lastly, Silva introduced a concept called the Mood Economy which just fell flat with me. I imagine I won’t be alone in viewing the concept as overly abstract. She, in essence, argues that instead of traditional markers of adulthood (e.g., school, job, marriage, kids), that adulthood is instead anchored in a quest to manage one’s emotions and to be content despite past trauma, insecurity, and loss.

An interesting read, but a dense one.

3 out of 5

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silva uses interviews to build a compelling argument about the changes to the markers of adulthood for young working class Americans. Career instability and he difficulty of getting a solid foothold on the old markets of progress have altered people's goals and what they think is possible. Silva writes well - this is a good read as an academic text and for a broader audience.

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important to the point study published before the current president took office that seems to me to explain much about why and how he did. I will review further in the future but I count this as vital reading.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for Sociology class, and was intrigued by the subject of the book. What does it mean to become in a adult in our age, especially for those part of the working class? Explains in detail also the nature of individualism in the States, and why people have lost trust in government/public institutions that theoretically could provide social support to those who are not so well of.

[Princess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not long before I picked up this book, I said to a friend over the phone, "Sometimes I feel like I'm failing at adulthood. All those checkboxes: school, job, house, car, marriage, kids...I feel like I can check only two or three. I feel like I'm behind somehow." Sadly, these sentiments are not unique. They are familiar to many guys and girls my age - we so-called "millenials." On the one hand, we are shadowed by our parents' definitions of adulthood, and on the other, we must come to terms with our present-day cultural, social, and financial demands.

In Coming Up Short, Jennifer M. Silva tackles questions about what it means to transition to adulthood as a working class young man or woman. Drawing from interviews with 100 young men and women from two former industrial strongholds - Richmond, Virginia and Lowell, Massachusetts - she artfully prods the external and internal forces that influence today's young working class adults. She presents compelling and insightful answers - rendering solidity and coherence to issues usually discussed in abstract terms.

Recommended.

[Elizabeth Higginbotham · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book as Silva shared the experiences of young working class people coming of age in this neo-liberal era. As a baby boomer, the study was eye opening in the terrain young people have to navigate with little support. While higher education secured my future, not only does it fail many of the people here, but they go into huge debt. I realize from the outside that young people face a crazy web of service jobs, but Silva really communicates the costs of this rise of service work and the decline in industrial employment. It is good that she tells these stories, since everyone needs to know and I hope her book can encourage young people who are very committed to this individualism to think about collective action to get institutions and business to work for them, rather than just exploit them.

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silva pursues an important story - the one that we are all living - about how young adults experience a world that is riven with precarious employment, hardening political imaginaries, and uncertain futures. Her interviewees, some 100 or so young adults in a former manufacturing country, express their hopes and doubts, problems and joys to her, and her response, initially a dissertation, was to explore the following idea: that

The emerging working-class adult—bewildered in the labour market, betrayed by institutions, distrustful of love, disconnected from others, and committed to emotional growth—turns taken for granted notions of stable adulthood on their head.

Silva points out that adulthood has been changed in four ways, namely:
- the end of the welfare state, "risk-pooling", and social safety nets that helped people from the 50s to the 80s get by;
- the preponderance and firm integration of neoliberalism within imaginaries and governmental policy alike; and,
- the decline of industrialism and societal shift toward what some now call "post-industrial" society, with knock-on effects for the working classes; and,
- the long cultural shifts regarding gender and race from the 1960s to today.

I found Silva a wonderful storyteller and an adroit critic whose firmness in maintaining theoretical distinctions and organized expository flow meshes well with her ability to shine light on the lives of young people and, in particular, allow them to speak powerfully to their concerns. Most concretely, Silva's notion of neoliberal identification between their work and their identies leads her to discern how “working class young men and women inhabit a mood economy in which legitimacy and self-worth are purchased not with traditional currencies such as work or marriage or class solidarity but instead through the ability to organize their emotions into a narrative of self-transformation." It is here, in the thorny realm of neoliberal therapy, where the most difficult and accordingly most stringent observations are made. Because of the intensity of change, and the isolation in which many people today live, the precarity of contemporary work has an outsized effect on young adults. Or, as Silva puts it,

For the post-industrial generation of working-class men and women, it is not blue-collar work but rather the flux and flexibility left behind by its disappearance that defines their coming of age experiences. Young working-class men and women employ emotional suffering as the new currency of adulthood; it is through managing this suffering within the self that they access the dignity and sense of forward-moving progress due adults.

Timing and Politics
Silva conducted her research in the early 2010s and published this in 2013, meaning that her book does not account for the phenomenon of Trump or reactionary right-wing populism that permeates politics today. However, I found her book insightful on exactly this point, as she discerns the "hardening" of political and ethical relationships in reaction to the structural difficulties that many young Americans face. I cannot stress enough how those who cry about the need for X or Y political solution need to contend with these forces in people's lives, especially those left wing liberals who foolishly believe that the language of inclusion and rejection of "hate" are enough to form a political platform in today's increasingly inequal society. I'll close with her words on the subject:

In an era of short term flexibility, constant flux, and hollow institutions, the transition to adulthood has been inverted; coming of age does not entail entry into social groups and institutions but rather the explicit rejection of them.
In turn, working-class men and women draw harsh boundaries against those who cannot make it on their own, revealing deep animosities toward others—particularly African Americans—who are perceived as undeserving of help. In the end, by rejecting solidarity with others, insisting that they are individuals who can define their own identities and futures, and hardening themselves against social institutions and the government, working-class men and women willingly embrace neoliberalism as the commonsense solution to the problems of bewilderment and betrayal that plague their coming of age journeys. [...] [And, in turn] the therapeutic narrative has become a vital coping mechanism for combating the chaos, hopelessness, and insecurity that threatens daily to strip working-class young people’s lives of all remnants of meaning and order.

Start there. Otherwise, no politics will grow successfully in the soil of popular support.

[amelia]

In ‘Coming Up Short’ the author interviews 100 working class men and women from the US. Many are from Richmond and Lowell, cities that were once key sites of manufacturing and the industrial working class, but are now solidly deindustrialised. The book explores what it is like to come of age as a young working class person in a post-industrial economy.

The 1970’s neoliberal turn towards privatisation and de-regulation obliterated jobs for life and economic stability, now the labour market forces workers to be flexible, precarious and insecure. Silva argues economic upheavals and the collapse of the post-WW2 social-democratic consensus have disrupted young working-class people’s ability to attain traditional markers of success. Things like moving out, buying a home, marrying, child-rearing, having a well-paid job, pulling up your bootstraps and attaining general financial stability.

Traditionally, achieving these markers of success made you an adult. But for many young working class people now the economic conditions have changed so aggressively that reaching these markers is significantly more difficult — or they are at least severely delayed and more likely to be reversible. The impact of this is multifarious, Silva focusses on how these changes in the economic sphere have significantly altered working-class selfhood, and cultural and emotional understandings of success and adulthood.

Silva broadly argues that young working-class people have low levels of class solidarity and consciousness, and instead have absorbed neoliberal ideology. Evidencing this is how many of her interviewees blame their circumstances on personal mistakes. Ideas of self-sufficiency and individualism —the cultural and ideological ideas of neoliberalism— primarily inform these young peoples understandings of themselves and how they should relate to the world (“I can only rely on myself.”) The root blame for their situation, whether it be unemployment, underemployment, addiction, failed relationships or debt, lies not in the economic realm but in personal failings of themselves or their families. Silva links this to historical changes in the power of the organised industrial (white) working class, who as their economic and political power declined, and so too did their class consciousness.

Other negative feelings like betrayal reoccur in young-peoples narratives of their lives. Many of the interviewees had extortionate amounts of debt, usually accrued through school loans and credit cards. Many had gone to university but despite this came out the other side still as bar staff, baristas or doing low paid admin work. Many young working-class people feel betrayed, because performing well academically, or attending university, did not guarantee them a good job and, in reality, the world is not their oyster. As a result, there is increasing hostility and suspicion of the state and state institutions such as schools, universities, social services, who working-class adults feel have duped them.

The collapse of education as being a gateway to secure, well paid employment also has the effect of delivering some canon fodder to the US military industrial complex, as many young adults turn to military enrolment as a path to social mobility, financial security due to benefits in pay and access to public sector jobs when discharged.

Alongside the acceptance of neoliberal ideology, with the collapse of religion, a workplace union or stable family unit to organise life and make sense of the world, young working-class people have turned to pop-psychology, which has infiltrated society at large. A key argument of Silva’s is that working-class adults, unable to realise traditional markets of success, turn to ‘psychic’ or ‘therapeutic’ means to feel fulfilled. ‘Sefl-transformation’ then, overcoming an addiction, recognising and dealing with a mental health problem, addressing childhood trauma, becomes a marker of adulthood and evidence of ‘success’. Being able to overcome personal problems and become a better person is essential in giving an individual a feeling of achievement. Especially as they can no longer attain a feeling of success or achievement in the traditional ways their parents or grandparents could.

In turn, young people attribute their present suffering and difficulty to "previous emotional wounds sustained in childhood", the result being the mystification of the real causes of suffering and difficulty in day to day life, which as Silva argues lie in the economic sphere and the deeply insecure labour market, bullshit jobs and inability to meet basic living costs.

The issue with the turn towards therapy and therapeutic ideas is it that it makes the self both the key actor and main obstacle in achieving success, happiness and well-being. Naturally this leads to narcissism, self indulgence and self reliance. There is also the internalisation of a separate, special identity as a survivors, or as people suffering with x MH problem, or y learning difficulty. Resulting in an “endless array of individual narratives” when in fact a many young working-class people are “struggling with similar, structurally rooted problems” that can only be solved through “collective politicisation”.


I thought Silva dealt well with thinking through the collapse of institutions like marriage, the nuclear family and religion, highlighting it’s complexity. On one hand, the breakdown of the married, nuclear family for working-class males has been negative — lost of self esteem, inability to be an economic breadwinner, yearning for nostalgic forms of family organisation, the growth of incels and red-pilled PUAs. And on the other hand the liberatory outcomes for women and the LGBTQ+ community, as the family and religion were a site of repression. The interviews suggest that cultural ideas about men as main breadwinners remain strong for both working-class men and women. And even some working class women question the “feminist promises of egalitarian gender relationships” as they struggle to juggle work and home responsibilities, instead feeling unfulfilled and desiring to "be taken care of".

Historically marriage was traditionally distinctly gendered, however now due to lack of job security and low income, both individuals have to work, bringing married and cohabiting couple under strain. In reality, “national data reveal a growing “divorce divide” in the United States: since the 1970s, marital dissolution rates have fallen dramatically among highly educated men and women but remained steady among those with lower education such that women with a four-year college degree are half as likely as other women to experience marital dissolution in the first ten years of a marriage.” In terms of navigating intimate relationships in general, Silva identifies a general trend of emotional hesitancy, and a fear of being betrayed or failing, like everything else in society, intimate relationships feel like just another risk on top of every other worry you have.


As I understand it this is a PhD dissertation turned book, it’s a little bit academic and repetitive at points but I think it’s quite accessible, and the authors reliance on qualitative, personal stories and then reflective analysis on these make this a interesting, narrative driven book.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

- The transformation of the economy also means that the old, labor-intensive world is long gone (or outsourced to cheaper nationals, where there, an economic boom is taking place). However, working class people who long relied on such models - marrying early, have babies early, work in dead-end jobs, have not caught on to the new world

- Yet, to make the matter worse, they're also infected by the new world ideas that are much suited for the highly educated class: that life is supposed to have meanings, that marriage could mean romance. While in itself, those messages weren't wrong, but fit to the working class people, it becomes unpractical. After all, if they could not be trained properly (perhaps also due to the lack of innate inabilities as well as discipline/good study habits) to do highly sophisticated jobs, they simply can't afford to find work with meanings that pays a decent wage. Yet, by working in jobs that has very little meaning and pays very little, those people also can't be in a marriage that involves romance - after all, romance is a luxury that's built upon stability

- The information gap between the have and have not is rather massive, despite the ironic fact that information through the transmission of the internet is cheaper and more widely enough (College Confidential, Above the Law, or Wall Street Oasis is just one click away, after all). The have-nots only got half-true information (college is the road to success - but which college? What major? What internship? Which class to take in HS?) that ultimately became costly and diversion to their lives

- Lastly, confused and trapped, the working class numbs themselves by making themselves "feel better" by reinforcing the notion that they're indeed doing better - even if they're not.

[Dylan Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silva did an incredible amount of in-depth interviewing for this book: 100 working class young adults in Lowell, Mass. and Richmond, Va. There's a lot of diversity within those 100 as well: sizable black and white populations; a meaningful selection of gay and lesbian adults, including gay/lesbian POC; college grads and non-attendees; married, single, and divorced.

And she's able to weave their narratives into a surprisingly coherent, clear, and convincing portrait of a generation that has thoroughly absorbed the idea that their problems are individual in nature, that failure is a personal defect rather than a systemic flaw, and that engage in self-blame even when their problems have clear external sources (like an abusive ex).

My only real gripe is that she sometimes treats the sample as though it's not just instructive but representative in a statistical sense. A small share of the sample is married, so working-class young adults are wary of relationships. Much of the sample has experience with the military or national guard, so those are common experiences for working-class young adults. That's not, I think, a valid inference.

But if you treat the book as what it is — an incredibly deep look at a large, non-random, but nonetheless informative cross-section of young adults of limited means in the wake of the financial crisis — there's a tremendous amount of value here, including a coda about the transformative power of noise rock.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

One needs some University Press, paid by the taxes, to publish such stupidity. Right. The age of uncertainty, unlike the centuries when wolves with torches attached to cat-like tails would light your path, and the ecology of mud roads in which the cart might get stuck for days. Now life can be so uncertain. Of course, fear no more, because Silva has the silver bullet, and like in Soviet Union, people would get certainty: certainty to go to jail for making jokes with the beloved leader, certain that meat would be delivered some time in the next five weeks, and certainty that the first 100 buyers would get to take home a small piece of lard.

[Julia Montiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first picked up this book, I thought that I would become enlightened and re-affirmed in my beliefs as a struggling millennial. However, it fell short of those expectations and actually did not capture the entirety of what millennials are facing this age. This perspective was written from a privileged position, one where I and most other people of color, could not relate at all.

[Cary Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dense - this is clearly an academic writing. I highly recommend this book to both conservatives and liberals. The book covers how personal growth, emotional management, and “therapeutic narrative” is used by working class adults to order their lives and feel like adults in a world without stable employment.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heartbreaking book about people who have turned away from society as they have entered adulthood. Lack of trust in institutions and economic precarity have resulted in unfulfilling emotional relationships at home and a feeling of disrespect at work.

[DM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong sociology that connects gender class and race inequality/experiences of insecurity and betrayal from institutions with new ideas of self hood. Even though she had caveats still has a bit of that Fordist nostalgia.

[jackie rosenblum · Rating 4 out of 5]

really really well written. a good balance of sociological theory and personal anecdotes. just know that it will make you think about growing up a whole lot differently, and maybe break your heart a little bit too.

[Angela Rossi · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this for school but it really resonated with me

[Rachel White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got a little repetitive, but good overall. Lil dated now, would like this study done again today, post pandemic

[William Sommer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed. Her concept of the mood economy was interesting.

[Dre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the content, but it was so repetitive. It helped get the point across, but also helped me loose interest. Read it for a class.

Also ... take a shot every time she starts a sentence with, "That is."

[Seward Park Branch Library, NYPL · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jennifer Silva's 'Coming Up Short' is a book that *ought* to have been written—all too often in this country is the subject of income inequality broached from the much more politically safe parlance of the "Middle Class", a term certainly more loaded with Americanisms that you can shake a stick at.

I think talking about class in America is a little tricky. Rather, Capitalism is a system fueled by the fire of its losers rather than the so-called 'genius' of its winners—'Coming Up Short' is a book that takes a look at Capitalism's losers. Vast segments of the population who stand on a precipice, at risk of falling into America's underclass... that is, if they haven't already fallen. Sadly, some of Silva's subjects are those who have fallen, and hard.

There are some interesting points made, the most important being that there seems to be a conflict of interest amongst Capitalism's losers. On the one hand, there is an adherence to striving towards a (vague) code of 'traditional' values, often fueled by nostalgia for America's 'golden age'. Indeed, for many working families, the Fordist American platform was understood as a boon, with many of America's symbols of status and affluence available to 'average' Americans for the first time, like never before. This nostalgia comes into conflict with the flexible self, which is necessitated by the ongoing change that many people these days can expect to find in an economy increasingly based on high turnover, low-wage labor. This in turn informs what Silva cites as the 'Mood Economy'. As a result, considering oneself as an adult has less to do with symbols of status such as raising a family, owning a home &c., but with 'overcoming' oneself as an obstacle to one's own success. Additionally, adulthood is understood as an ability to adapt to unreliable and rapidly changing opportunities, which often involves a mistrust of institutions, as well as resentment of friends and family.

In short, the atomistic effects of neo-liberalism have, despite the mounting nostalgia for traditional 'American Values', resulted in putting a premium on examining (or often blaming) the self, rather than of society or institutions, which are sort of dismissed out-of-hand.

While there is very little to disagree with in this short piece, it will probably hardly come as a revelation. Further still, a few of the points in the book seem a bit half baked, or not fully worked out. Many of the 'lessons' garnered from the interviews seem a tad anecdotal. Nevertheless, I look forward to anything that Silva may release in the future... I'm all 'eyes,' so to speak...


—AF

[Meli · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, an upsetting statistic I learned from this book:

"Since the 1970s, marital dissolution rates have fallen dramatically among highly educated men and women but remained steady among those with lower education such that women with a four-year college degree are half as likely as other women to experience marital dissolution in the first ten years of a marriage."

Some key ideas I took away from this book:

"Ideology produces subjects who experience their subjugation as natural, inevitable, and freely chosen, and therefore reproduce existing relations of production 'by themselves.'"

In Silva's study, she interviewed 100 working-class young adults. Overwhelmingly, they drew boundaries between themselves and "those who are closest to and just below them in the social structure." They take ownership of their successes in overcoming adversity, but this also means that they blame themselves when they don't succeed, instead of acknowledging "class, race, or gender-based injustice as true obstacles," and that they separate themselves from others who fail to overcome the hardships that they overcame. This erodes class solidarity and thereby reinforces the societal structures that keep poor people poor. Neoliberalism reinforces itself.

"'The personal is political' was intended to reveal the profoundly historical and collective nature of experience, not to create a endless array of individual narratives. Yet, without a collective sense of structural inequalities, the suffering and betrayal born of de-industrialization, inequality, and risk is interpreted as individual failure... by dismissing the social forces that work against their attempts to create secure futures and placing responsibility for success only on themselves, this generation of working-class youth will experience coming of age as perpetually coming up short—yet have only themselves to blame."



I found this hard to read—it's full of citations and footnotes, which I find it so challenging to stay focused through. Also, it's depressing as fuck. But there are so many people I want to recommend it to.

[Daniel Palevski · Rating 5 out of 5]

100 snippets of real, working class, young adulthood, across the US eastern seaboard during the early 20-teens.

Initially, this book reads like an academic research paper (which I guess it is), but the meat of this sociological research project comes out in the stories and confessions of young adults.

All of the participants are basically asked the same simple question - what does reaching adulthood mean to you?

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating 2.5
Out of all the books for class this was most likely the best one. The writing is very fluid and easy to understand. The author tries very hard to paint the proper picture of the loss of adulthood through the interviewees eyes. The book is pretty educational and an eye opener for different ideas of risk and livelihood. In the end I didn't hate this book but I can't say that I liked it either so somewhere I between.