In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich left her life as a writer and joined the millions of Americans who struggle to make ends meet on a minimum-wage salary.

Working as a waitress, hotel maid, housekeeper, nursing home aide and a Wal-Mart sales associate, Ehnreich — a renowned author and journalist — tried to see whether one could feasibly rise up from poverty. At 8 p. m. tonight in Campbell Hall, she will talk about her experiences as chronicled in her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. During the two-year project, Ehrenreich spent a month in each of five U. S. locales, including Portland, Minnesota and Key West, Florida, often doubling up on jobs to make ends meet. In an interview, she said her personal activism partially led her to pursue this project.

“I’m a journalist and a writer and a commentator and a political activist,” Ehrenreich said. “I was concerned by welfare reform — that’s what inspired me. It didn’t seem to me the wages out there were adequate, but nobody seemed to believe me when I would write about this. It didn’t seem to impress people. ”

Ehrenreich said her experiences working at jobs earning minimum wage helped reinforce and enhance her opinions about poverty-stricken lifestyles.

“The main [effect] of the experience was to make me angrier, really angrier,” she said. “I had been angry in some way, but it was more abstract. I got out there in my own body and saw how people were treated in ways that I couldn’t intervene to help them… It left me with a lot of rather positive anger about the need for change and economic justice. ”

Ehrenreich said she worked five different jobs averaging $7 an hour, which she said was not enough to make rent