10 People Who Truly Deserve a Day Off: A Narratively Best-Of Collection
From the traveling families of circus-land to a bricklaying third grader, fill your Labor Day weekend with these stories of people who truly know what it means to work for a living.
1. Growing Upside Down By Fernando Molina Cortés
Photo by Fernando Molina Cortés
In small-town Peru, Juan Huachaca rises before dawn and works until dusk, hauling mud and building bricks to support his family. He also occasionally attends third grade.
2. The Underpaid Grunts of TV Talk Show Land
By Aitana Vargas
Illustration by Sarah Glidden
The smiling, screaming audience on your favorite daytime show might not be so ecstatic after all.
3. How to Stay Sane as a Female Deckhand in Alaska
By Rachel Cassandra
Photo courtesy Rachel Cassandra
As one of very few women working in Alaska salmon country, I learned how to gut a fish and swallow its heart. But an even harder trick was navigating the torrential sea of masculinity.
4. This Woman Watches an Ungodly Amount of Porn...Because It's Her Job
By Mel Films
Image: MEL Films
From the comfort of coffee shops in Eastern Europe, one web-savvy woman earns her paycheck protecting pornographers from copyright infringement.
5. The Traveling Families of Carnival Town, USA
By Eric Kruszewski
Photo by Eric Kruszewski
For most of us, the world of rickety roller coasters and unwinnable arcade games is a sunny summer distraction. For them, it’s a way of life.
6. Mr. Ince and the Hope of Being Needed
By Mario Kaiser | Photos by Maurice Weiss
Photo by Maurice Weiss
A year and a half with a tireless Turkish day laborer in Berlin shatters the stereotype of the freeloader in Europe’s pivotal immigration debate.
7. The Women of the World's Most Backbreaking Border
By Fernando Molina Cortés
Photo by Fernando Molina Cortés
As the sun rises over the chaotic borderland where Morocco flirts with Spain, hundreds of women report for an unthinkable daily grind.
8. Hang Men
By Tara Israel & Judy Batalion
Photo by Tara Israel
Behind the scenes with the art world's silent schleppers.
9. 'People Really Like It, They Just Don't Tell Their Friends'
By Annalisa Merelli
Still from "I Love Your Work," by Jonathan Harris
Meet the creator of an interactive documentary on the lives of nine women who make lesbian porn.
10. Dreams and Nightmares of Singapore's Hired Help
By Nicolas Axelrod, Thomas Cristofoletti & Michael Malay
Photo by Nicholas Axelrod
Asia’s gleaming city-state is a beacon of opportunity for impoverished women in next-door Indonesia, but life here can just as quickly become a dark hole of disappointment and despair.