How May I Help You?: An Immigrant's Journey from MBA to Minimum Wage - Softcover

Singh, Deepak

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520293312 ISBN 13: 9780520293311

Publisher: University of California Press, 2017

Synopsis

In this moving and insightful work, Deepak Singh chronicles his downward mobility as an immigrant to a small town in Virginia. Armed with an MBA from India, Singh can get only a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day he confronts unfamiliar American mores, from strange idioms to deeply entrenched racism.
 
Telling stories through the unique lens of an initially credulous outsider who is “fresh off the plane,” Singh learns about the struggles of his colleagues: Ron, a middle-aged African-American man trying to keep his life intact despite health concerns; Jackie, a young African-American woman diligently attending school after work; and Cindy, whose matter-of-fact attitude helps Deepak adapt to his job and his new life.
  
How May I Help You? is an incisive take on life in the United States and a reminder that the stories of low-wage employees can bring candor and humanity to debates about work, race, and immigration.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"Deepak Singh shares his incredible stories of learning, feeling, beauty, work, friendship, and marriage. It is at once deeply personal and specific, while also resonating with fellow humans’ similar struggles across the globe."—Dr. Susan D. Blum, author of Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths

"I devoured Deepak Singh's memoir at home, at work, on the subway and on the streets of New York. It's funny, eye-opening, and deeply human in its regard for working-class Americans and for all people who struggle to make ends meet. If Barbara Ehrenreich had been born in India, Nickel and Dimed might've looked a lot like this." —Arun Venugopal, WNYC

"Deepak Singh reanimates the fears, joys, bafflements, and general vertigo of those first few months after immigrating to the United States. With humor and pathos in equal measure, Singh shows us how difficult it is to work at the most insecure levels of American society." —Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia

About the Author

Deepak Singh is a writer, radio producer, and journalist. He is a frequent contributor to PRI’s The World and has written for The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe and The Atlantic.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0520293312
• ISBN 13: 9780520293311
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 305