Jessica Bendzick/ Winonan

Students, faculty, staff and community members gathered in the Harriet Johnson Auditorium to listen to Tracie McMillan discuss her book “The American Way of Eating,” on Monday, Sept. 29.

McMillan worked undercover as a farmworker in California, a Walmart employee in Michigan and an expeditor at a New York Applebee’s, to help her write her book, which was selected as Winona State University’s  Common Book for 2014-15.

“I wanted to get inside the head of someone who was trying to eat and live at the bottom of the food system, and that’s something I couldn’t figure out unless I went and did it myself,” McMillan said.

She said she lived and ate off of her wages for two months at each job.

When in California cutting garlic, McMillan and 15 others shared one house, bathroom and kitchen. McMillan said the garlic cutting was so demanding that it lead her to develop tendinitis in her right arm.

“It wasn’t until my body really began to resist the work like this that I really appreciated how closely a farm worker’s earnings is reliant on their physical body,” she said.

For every pound of garlic McMillan clipped, she earned approximately 6 cents. On her first day in the garlic fields, she worked eight hours and picked ten buckets of garlic, earning $16. To make it look as if they were paying their employees minimum wage, the company she worked for would divide the individual amount each employee earned by $8, McMillan said.

McMillan said the first paycheck she received listed that she worked for two hours, rather than eight.

At Applebee’s, McMillan said she worked as an expeditor and helped organize the kitchen.

“The way that a place like Applebee’s keeps its costs in check is that they portion things out very closely,” McMillan said.

She said someone in back would weigh out ten ounces of mashed potatoes and put individual helpings into plastic bags. The bags were then put in the fridge and heated up when needed.

McMillan said, in practice, this means diners are eating food that has been cooled and reheated many times.

She also said because the plastic degrades were heated and cooled numerous times, when she would empty the bags onto plates, the plastic particles would get all over the food.

While working the night shift at Walmart, McMillan said she would get off work and have no motivation to cook.

“If you have to cook, it’s a lot less fun. I really gained a new sympathy for parents and families who say they don’t like cooking,” she said.

Selecting McMillan’s book was a process that started last year, Ann-Marie Dunbar, an assistant professor of English, said.To select the Common Book every year, she said she sends out a general call for nominations. Nominations can be made by students, staff and community members. The Common Book Project committee then meets to condense the list down. They focus on how likely the book will engage students and the cost and availability of the author, Dunbar said.

“There are a lot of books that are nominated that won’t really work just because of the way we use it. The book is taught primarily in English 111 classes,” Dunbar said.

Once the list is narrowed down to under ten books, there is a final selection meeting open to the public.

Dunbar said she plans on sending out the call for 2015-2016 Common Book nominations in about one month.