A powerful reminder that service and other low-wage workers are complex and inspiring in their dogged efforts to remain afloat. This book features stories that serve as a chance to humanize debates about work, race, and immigration.

Foreword by Holly Donahue Singh Acknowledgments 1. Answering Machine 2. Lucknow 3. Transit 4. My American Wife 5. Job Application 6. Hired 7. First Day 8. One Month’s Notice 9. English 10. Colleagues 11. Olive Skin 12. Camera King 13. Don’t Buy It 14. Foreigner 15. My Name Is Deepak 16. I’m Straight Today 17. Holly and I 18. All Hands on Deck 19. Long Two Years 20. The Golden Quarter 21. Two Americas 22. Paula 23. Cameron 24. Don’t Sue Me! 25. Post-Christmas Blues 26. A Handful of Dimes 27. India Visit

"Deepak Singh shares his incredible stories of learning, feeling, beauty, work, friendship, and marriage. It is at once deeply personal and specific, while also resonating with fellow humans’ similar struggles across the globe."—Dr. Susan D. Blum, author of Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths "I devoured Deepak Singh's memoir at home, at work, on the subway and on the streets of New York. It's funny, eye-opening, and deeply human in its regard for working-class Americans and for all people who struggle to make ends meet. If Barbara Ehrenreich had been born in India, Nickel and Dimed might've looked a lot like this." —Arun Venugopal, WNYC "Deepak Singh reanimates the fears, joys, bafflements, and general vertigo of those first few months after immigrating to the United States. With humor and pathos in equal measure, Singh shows us how difficult it is to work at the most insecure levels of American society." —Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia