Sweat Prompt #3

Prompt #3 

America has always held the honorary title of “the land of opportunity”. And whether it may not always be kind enough to fulfill this promise, it definitely has a place for you. Whether you’re an immigrants or you’ve been here for generations, there is bound to be a community for you somewhere within this melting pot of land. But every story don’t always get told. Sometimes they’re hidden by media chatter of who’s dating who in Hollywood, or who you should vote for, or what to wear and how to live and how to spend your minimum wage salary so that it benefits the economy and not you. But Lynn Nottage has made it her mission to sort through the junk and the TV static and find the stories of real people. Not the white collar business men who make 300K a year, the lower class. The people that make up 46% of America. It may seem like the struggles of Olstead workers in Reading isn’t very widespread, but the truth is, this is how 46% of our country lives. When Cynthia and Tracey are discussing the possibility of applying for the new management job, Tracey says “Well, I got you beat by two [years]. Started in ’74, walked in straight outta high school. First and only job. Management is for them. Not us”. The ‘them versus us’ narrative is all too real in areas where labor rights are overlooked— Tracey believes that higher paying jobs will never be given to those working below average income like her, and in many places, they aren’t. This is the legacy of being invisible— the rights of Olstead workers aren’t advocated for even though they have a labor union. Stan also mentions how invisible he feels to his higher ups and says, “That’s when I knew, I was nobody to them. Nobody! Three generations of loyalty to the same company. This is America, right?” This monologue just goes to show how from a company perspective, workers aren’t even looked at as people, rather machines that have a higher liability than robots. This is what the New Yorker means by invisible. There are probably hundreds upon thousands of Stans in America who have given their livelihood to a factory and have received nothing in return but trauma and broken trust. Cynthia, looking back on her time at the factory as a line worker, says that “But I stood on line, patiently waiting for a break… You don’t know what it’s been like to walk in my shoes. I’ve absorbed a lotta shit over the years, but I worked hard to get off that floor”. Cynthia is visible to her bosses when they need someone to make a racist remark to or when they need to give someone a hard time, but she isn’t visible in the way that matters: being viewed as a real person with thought and emotions. But the factory doesn’t have time for the well-being of their workers, which is what Tracey, Stan, and Cynthia, all have in common. Lynn Cottage brings them to life and lets their story be told, which probably resonates with so much of the working class and below even today. 

I don’t even know if this qualifies as a meme, but I chose this to represent the line workers in ‘Sweat’, because even though they are standing in plain sight like the ‘naked invisible man’, they don’t receive the support they need, like job stability, improved labor rights, and so much more.