The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company

In the spirit of investigative journalism by Patrick Radden Keefe, Matthew Desmond and Beth Macy, an explosive exposé of the toxic labor practices at the largest meatpacking company in America, Tyson Foods.

By shining a light on the lives of the immigrant laborers from marginalized communities who prepare our food, Alice Driver blows the doors open on Tyson Foods, the largest meat-processing company in the US. Tyson Foods is based in Arkansas and relies overwhelmingly on immigrants and refugees to do the difficult and dangerous daily labor of processing chicken. During the pandemic, workers from Mexico, Central America, the Marshallese Islands, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Myanmar--many of whom only speak their native language--faced working conditions at meatpacking plants that would kill them in greater numbers than any other place in the US except prisons.

Laying bare a system of immigration law and labor exploitation that to this day values infinite growth at the expense of human beings, Driver’s book will forever change the conversation on labor conditions and the meaning of work, especially among ＂essential workers＂ who were applauded during the pandemic and then quickly forgotten by the mainstream media. All this packed into a memorable David and Goliath story of workers banding together to fight one powerful corporation, against all odds.

Alice Driver is a James Beard Award winning writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. Driver is the author of More or Less Dead (University of Arizona, 2015) and the forthcoming Artists All Around (Princeton Architectural Press 2025), a memoir about her family’s relationship with Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are. Driver is the translator of Abecedario de Juárez (University of Texas 2022). This is her first trade book.