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

In this exposé of workplace sexual violence against women, Yeung, a journalist from the Center for Investigative Reporting, amplifies the voices of some of the American economy’s most marginalized workers. As in the companion radio and television series, Rape in the Fields, the book breaks ground by exposing the ubiquity and severity of the abuse leveled against female farmworkers, domestic workers, and janitors by their employers. The author mitigates the difficult material by bringing humanity, empathy, and hope to each page. There are plenty of heroes to celebrate, such as Vicky Márquez, a former janitor who now does site visits for a nonprofit with the mission “of fighting labor exploitation among janitors working the graveyard shift,” and the women who testified against Evans Fruit for overlooking information that their orchard foreman was sexually harassing female farmworkers. Moments of indignation in Yeung’s writing feel completely justifiable. “Though these cases are described as he-said, she-said cases, the woman’s account is seldom given equal consideration,” she notes. The book concludes with guardedly hopeful descriptions of workplace training programs, government regulation, and union advocacy. Even more moving, however, is the sense of a reporter deeply committed to her sources and her material. (Mar.)