I’m interested in stories of people who experience major drops in social status, like someone going from being a doctor to not being permitted to practice medicine or even work in healthcare, or from director of some department in the government to having a minimum wage job.
Why? Perhaps due to immigration, some sudden health issue, being falsely accused of a crime, whatever. I’m interested in a book that really explains that internal process of someone refusing what their life has become (who they have become, people they are forced to hang out with now, their job options), and later coming to terms with it gradually or fighting through it hoping to regain previous status.
by erymanthian-boar
24 Comments
Jon Ronson has a whole book about the phenomenon:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed#:~:text=So%20You've%20Been%20Publicly%20Shamed%20is%20a%202015%20book,was%20popular%20in%20Colonial%20America.
Jon Ronson has a book *So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed* – I haven’t read it.
Jeffrey Archer’s prison memoirs might be worth a look though he didn’t lose a lot of status over it.
The Count of Monte Cristo comes to mind
Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir and A Little Princess.
The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
or
To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
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Well in Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters have to leave the family estate and move into a small country cottage and live on a very limited income.
The House of Mirth
A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles
A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe
The Bar Code Tattoo – Suzanne We
Everyone is expected to get the bar code tattoo at age 17, it is basically acts as a credit card that they bring everywhere, except it has everything from banking to medical history to genetic makeup
The count of Montecristo, by Alexandre Dumas
47 Ronin
{{The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe}}. The book is far better than the movie.
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Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K Dick. Man goes to bed as a famous talk show host, wakes up unknown. This would be sci-fi
the human stain phillip roth
The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah. Our protagonist goes from being the spoiled rich daughter of a drug dealer to living in a group home when dad gets arrested.
Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson
The widow of wall street
The Queen and I, Sue Townsend
It’s a short story, but one of Chekhov’s most famous: Ward Number Six.