The news that Ehrenreich died on September 1 was released by her son, Ben Ehrenreich, on Friday. He accompanied the announcement with a comment that echoed his mother’s spirit: “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving each other and fighting like hell.” Ehrenreich has struggled for more than half a century as a writer dedicated to standing up to injustice and giving voice to those who are not usually heard. Her first book, published in 1969, Long March, Short Song, was an account of the student uprising against the Vietnam War. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, her 2001 bestseller, she wrote about a fascinating life experience as a low-wage worker in Key West, Florida. The book helped spread awareness of an economy in which it was necessary to work two or three jobs to survive, and acted as a catalyst for the minimum wage movement. Later, she used her name and energy to try to give a direct voice to low-income and other disadvantaged groups to tell their own stories. He founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project which supports independent journalists to write about their lives, including the poor rural areas of the US. Ehrenreich, who earned a PhD in cell biology before turning to social activism and writing, was diagnosed in 2000 with breast cancer. He wrote an award-winning Welcome to Cancerland essay about the experience. She brought her trademark clear-eyed reporting to the subject of her own mortality. In 2018, he published Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, in which he described his realization that he had lived long enough to die. “That thought had been forming in my mind for some time,” he told the Guardian at the time. “I really don’t have hard evidence as to exactly when someone is old enough to die, but I notice in the obituaries if the person is over 70 there is no great mystery, no inquest required. It is not usually called tragic because we die at a certain age. I found it rather refreshing.” Announcing his mother’s death on Twitter, Ben Ehrenreich echoed this point. “She was, she made it clear, ready to go,” he said.
