She is the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (2016) and Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone (2021), and most recently From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire (2024).

Jaffe is a columnist for The Progressive and New Labor Forum, and her work has appeared in such outlets as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The New Republic.

[1] Jaffe initially wanted to be a novelist or screenwriter, but when she graduated into the early 2000s recession, she ended up working as a waitress and in retail jobs for five years.

[7][8] It looks at the preceding decade of activism in the United States, from Occupy Wall Street through the Tea Party movement to Black Lives Matter.

[11] Jaffe argues that this logic makes workers like teachers, “'the ultimate laborers of love,’ ... expected to undergo unfair work conditions, including low pay and long hours because they love their students.”[11] Further, she suggests it silences critique because low-paid (or unpaid) workers in their “dream job” in the non-profit world, internships, or academia are seen as ungrateful if they question the power arrangement in their work and who it serves: “We’re supposed to work for the love of it ... and how dare we ask questions about the way our work is making other people rich while we struggle to pay rent.”[11] Ultimately, Retta finds “one of Jaffe’s most interesting points is made in her discussion of our unrequited love for labor has perverted our ability to love other human beings,” with work absorbing more and more affective investment and leaving little room for personal relationships, which Jaffe urges readers to resist, writing, “What I believe, and want you to believe too...is that love is too big and beautiful and grand and messy and human a thing to be wasted on a temporary fact of life like work.”[11] The book received praise from reviewers.