Margaret Novoa, “Angela Cleaning Table”

“The day after Thanksgiving I was exhausted, and my little pixie Angela was bored,” writes Margaret Novoa about this photograph. “So I asked her to clean my glass tops. I like that sweet little girl.”

Ms. Novoa is an insurance coder at Jamaica Hospital Family Practice Center and a member of 1199SEIU in New York City. The image comes out of her participation in photography classes offered through Bread and Roses, a nonprofit cultural project of the labor union 1199. It is included in Unseen America: Photos and Stories by Workers (Regan Books, 2006).