Becca Bailey

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Reading path

Labor & Recognition

Essays on invisible work, burnout, gender, and the difference between labor that sustains life and work that lasts.

Essays in this path

  1. 1.

    Who Gets to Be the Hero?

    On heroes, housework, and the labor no one sees

    Burnout sent me looking for the difference between work and labor — and into Hannah Arendt's distinction between what sustains life and what lasts. This essay follows the invisible upkeep that piles up on the same people, what unpaid leave actually looked like, and why fantasy heroes always seem to have magic doing their laundry.

Further reading