A Fight for a Cup of Chai

A Fight for a Cup of Chai is a nonfiction account of factory labor in 1990s Nepal, told through the lived experience of a young worker navigating poverty, injury, and survival within an informal industrial system.

As a child laborer in a Kathmandu shoe factory, Sanman Thapa lost his hand to unsafe machinery-an injury shaped by economic necessity and the absence of worker protections. Rather than framing exploitation abstractly, the book documents daily factory life, bodily risk, class hierarchy, and the quiet endurance required to persist under unsafe working conditions.

Written from firsthand experience, A Fight for a Cup of Chai offers a human-scale perspective on global labor systems and the costs borne by workers in the Global South. The narrative provides valuable context for readers and students examining industrialization, workers rights, and labor history beyond Western settings.

This book is well-suited for classroom use and comparative study alongside units on the Industrial Revolution, child labor, and global supply chains.