Bernice Yeung "In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence against America's Most Vulnerable Workers"

Department: English

Date and Time: November 21, 2019 | 12:00 PM-2:00 PM

Event Location: EDU 1111

Event Details


Dear UCI Colleagues,

Please join us Thursday, November 21 from 12-2PM in EDU 1111 for a talk by journalist Bernice Yeung on her 2019 Pulitzer finalist book IN A DAY'S WORK: THE FIGHT TO END SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST AMERICA'S MOST VULNERABLE WORKERS (https://thenewpress.com/books/days-work). Yeung's talk will be followed by a conversation with Ada Briceño, the co-president of UNITE-HERE Local 11. Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP here: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07egnrbzi51f563fca&oseq=&c=&ch=.

Bernice Yeung is an investigative journalist at ProPublica, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, PBS Frontline, New York magazine, and others.

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. The author mitigates the difficult material by bringing humanity, empathy, and hope to each page. 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 underresourced 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.

UCI Co-sponsors include: Intiative to End Family Violence, the Literary Journalism program, the departments of English and Asian American Studies, and the Culture & Capital Center.
 

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