In a Day's Work - The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

From the publisher

From tomato fields to suburban shopping malls, an acclaimed journalist’s devastating exposé about how sexual assault affects our country’s most invisible workers

Apple orchards in bucolic Washington state. Office parks in Southern California under cover of night. The home of an elderly man in Miami. These are some of the workplaces where female workers have suffered brutal sexual assault and shocking harassment at the hands of their employers, often with little or no official recourse. In this harrowing yet often inspiring tale, investigative journalist Bernice Yeung exposes the epidemic of sexual violence levied against women farmworkers, domestic workers, and janitorial workers and charts their quest for justice in the workplace.

Yeung takes readers on a journey across the country, introducing us to women who came to America to escape grinding poverty only to encounter sexual violence in the United States. In a Day’s Work exposes the underbelly of economies filled with employers who take advantage of immigrant women’s need to earn a basic living. When these women find the courage to speak up, Yeung reveals, they are too often met by apathetic bosses and under-resourced government agencies. But In a Day’s Work also tells a story of resistance, introducing a group of courageous allies who challenge dangerous and discriminatory workplace conditions alongside aggrieved workers—and win. Moving and inspiring, this book will change our understanding of the lives of immigrant women.

This was not an easy book to read as proven by the above description. While reading the book I came to realize that it is, what I would call, a “hidden demographic of women” i.e. those who are in The USA illegally that arrest most vulnerable. The author presents story after story of women who are brutally assaulted and raped and not paid for their hours, women who know that if they complain, they can be fired or deported at the drop of a hat. I am not sure if Canada has as many problems – I live near many farms: the Niagara Region is known as “Canada’s Fruit Baskets” but you don’t hear much about women here. Luckily there are tireless people (mostly women working) for safety in the job force for workers who fled their home countries in hopes of supporting a family.

The book is well written and inspiring enough to wonder if the food you are eating was from a farm where these women are victims of sexual violence and can you do anything about it …that is a bitter pill to swallow no matter how you look at it.