Working Class Heroines

Working Class Heroines
Author: Kevin C. Kearns
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
Total Pages: 619
Release: 2018-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0717162702

In Working Class Heroines acclaimed historian Kevin C. Kearns brings us the voices of the forgotten women of Dublin's tenements. If it weren't for his work the lives of these everyday heroines would be lost forever. Based on 30 years of research spent interviewing and recording the life stories of the working-class women of Dublin, it covers the squalid tenement days of the early 1900s, through the mid-century decades of 'slumland' block flats, and into the 1970s when deadly drugs infiltrated poor neighbourhoods, terrifying mothers and stealing away their children. What emerges is an intimate and poignant celebration of the mammies and grannies who held the fabric of family life in an environment of hardship and, often, cruelty.Through vivid tales of how they coped with grinding poverty, huge families, pitiless landlords, the oppressive Church, dictatorial priests, feckless and often abusive husbands, these remarkable women shine with astonishing dignity, wit, pride and a resilient spirit, despite their struggles.Working Class Heroines gives voice and pays tribute to the long silent, unsung heroines who were the indispensable caretakers of both family and community, and remains one of the most important Irish feminist documents of our times."The ordinary woman has long been absent from our national narrative. I think we should be grateful that Working Class Heroines exists, and we can benefit now from listening to these voices.' Ellen Coyne, The Sunday Times

Working Class Heroines

Working Class Heroines
Author: Kevin C. Kearns
Publisher: Gill & Company
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780717183517

In Working Class Heroines acclaimed historian Kevin C. Kearns brings us the voices of the forgotten women of Dublin's tenements. If it weren't for his work the lives of these everyday heroines would be lost forever. Based on 30 years of research spent interviewing and recording the life stories of the working-class women of Dublin, it covers the squalid tenement days of the early 1900s, through the mid-century decades of 'slumland' block flats, and into the 1970s when deadly drugs infiltrated poor neighbourhoods, terrifying mothers and stealing away their children. What emerges is an intimate and poignant celebration of the mammies and grannies who held the fabric of family life in an environment of hardship and, often, cruelty. Through vivid tales of how they coped with grinding poverty, huge families, pitiless landlords, the oppressive Church, dictatorial priests, feckless and often abusive husbands, these remarkable women shine with astonishing dignity, wit, pride and a resilient spirit, despite their struggles. Working Class Heroines gives voice and pays tribute to the long silent, unsung heroines who were the indispensable caretakers of both family and community, and remains one of the most important Irish feminist documents of our times. "The ordinary woman has long been absent from our national narrative. I think we should be grateful that Working Class Heroines exists, and we can benefit now from listening to these voices.' Ellen Coyne, The Sunday Times "Those of us who know and love Dublin owe Kearns a huge debt". Roddy Doyle Praise for Kevin Kearns' other unique oral histories of Dublin The Legendary "Lugs" Branigan: Ireland's Most Famed Garda 'A revealing portrait not just of a passionate and dedicated public figure, but also of a society undergoing great and constant change.' The Irish Independent Ireland's Arctic Siege: The Big Freeze of 1947 This story might have come from some Polar Expedition. It is almost unbelievable that such conditions could exist in Ireland.' The Irish Times The Bombing of Dublin's North Strand, 1941: The Untold Story 'What shines through is the courage and goodness of ordinary people, untrained for such catastrophe, in their attempts to save and help their fellow Dubliners.' The Irish Times Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History 'Among the finest books ever written about Dublin.' The Sunday Tribune 'This is truly an admirable book, capturing echoes of a vanished world. It is only by reading this book that I was enabled to re-imagine the society which the respondents recalled to Kevin Kearns during what must have been many hundreds of hours of patient interviewing.' The Irish Times 'This book will long stand as the definitive social history of Ireland's gulags, where the poor were herded together in conditions worse than animals and will hopefully serve as further inspiration to those who still campaign for decent housing for all our citizens.' Joe Duffy 'Those of us who know and love Dublin owe Kearns a huge debt.' Roddy Doyle Dublin Voices: An Oral Folk History 'This book is a goldmine of tiny details. The narrative voices that speak from every page of this book do so in an unfiltered language entirely their own.' The Sunday Times

Uncontrollable Women

Uncontrollable Women
Author: Nan Sloane
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1838607145

"Compelling." The Guardian "An insightful and inspiring history." BBC History Magazine "A tantalising revelatory book." The House "Brisk and illuminating." Times Literary Supplement "A damn good read." Morning Star "Wonderful." The Chartist Uncontrollable Women is a history of radical, reformist and revolutionary women between the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832. Very few of them are well-known today; some were unknown even in their own day. All of them contributed something to the world we now inhabit. At a time when women were supposed to leave politics to men they spoke, wrote, marched, organised, asked questions, challenged power structures, sometimes went to prison and even died. History has not usually been kind to them, and they have frequently been pushed into asides or footnotes, dismissed as secondary, or spoken over, for, or through by men and sometimes other women. In this book, they take centre stage in both their own stories and those of others, and in doing so bring different voices to the more familiar accounts of the period. These women and many others played a part in developing political ideas and freedoms as we know them today, and some fought battles which still remain to be won or raised questions that are still unresolved. These are their stories.

Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure

Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure
Author: Nan Enstad
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780231111034

At the beginning of the twentieth century, labor leaders in women's unions routinely chastised their members for their ceaseless pursuit of fashion, avid reading of dime novels, and "affected" ways, including aristocratic airs and accents. Indeed, working women in America were eagerly participating in the burgeoning consumer culture available to them. While the leading activists, organizers, and radicals feared that consumerist tendencies made working women seem frivolous and dissuaded them from political action, these women, in fact, went on strike in very large numbers during the period, proving themselves to be politically active, astute, and effective. In Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, historian Nan Enstad explores the complex relationship between consumer culture and political activism for late nineteenth- and twentieth-century working women. While consumerism did not make women into radicals, it helped shape their culture and their identities as both workers and political actors. Examining material ranging from early dime novels about ordinary women who inherit wealth or marry millionaires, to inexpensive, ready-to-wear clothing that allowed them to both deny and resist mistreatment in the workplace, Enstad analyzes how working women wove popular narratives and fashions into their developing sense of themselves as "ladies." She then provides a detailed examination of how this notion of "ladyhood" affected the great New York shirtwaist strike of 1909-1910. From the women's grievances, to the walkout of over 20,000 workers, to their style of picketing, Enstad shows how consumer culture was a central theme in this key event of labor strife. Finally, Enstad turns to the motion picture genre of female adventure serials, popular after 1912, which imbued "ladyhood" with heroines' strength, independence, and daring.

In Wilderness

In Wilderness
Author: Diane Thomas
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804176965

SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 10 GREAT THRILLERS FOR YOUR BEACH READING LIST BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY For readers of Ron Rash, Thomas H. Cook, and Tim Johnston, In Wilderness is a suspenseful and literary love story hailed by New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson as “heartbreaking, bold, relentless” and “the work of a true original.” Includes an exclusive conversation between Diane Thomas and Christina Baker Kline Told she is dying of the mysterious illness that plagues her, thirty-eight-year-old Katherine Reid moves to a remote cabin in the southern mountains to live out her last days. But in this peaceful solitude, her life may still be in terrible danger: A damaged young man also lives in the forest, and he watches her every move. Praise for In Wilderness “A harrowing exploration of desire and obsession, In Wilderness sends two people into a physical and psychological wilderness that becomes stranger and more terrifying the deeper they go.”—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train “Not my usual thing, which makes me say it all the louder: I love, love, love this book—the fearless and unflinching story of two extraordinary, vivid people alone in a vast pristine wilderness, told with genuine suspense and a wonderfully empowering ending. In Wilderness is altogether spectacular.”—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Personal “Thomas writes hauntingly of obsession and survival in this dark, unusual love story. . . . As the author moves her characters through the seasons of 1966, 1967, and 1968, she offers a deep and unforgettable look into how tragedy and madness can shape lives. Written from the points of view of two suffering people, the story takes on an almost surreal, lyrical quality. Riveting and raw.”—Publishers Weekly “Explosive . . . The tension continues to grow. . . . Thomas writes with richness, describing the natural world as viscerally as she does the interior lives of these two intense characters. . . . Recommended for readers who also like the raw, honest writing of Amy Bloom or Amanda Coplin.”—Library Journal “Gripping . . . powered by genuine suspense and driven forward by two characters whose lives readers cannot look away from . . . a memorable story of an isolated, beautiful place and of two people trying to make sense of the world they have chosen to live in.”—Booklist “Unforgettable: a mad, haunting, dreamlike story of love, obsession, and wildness . . . Diane Thomas mixes elegant prose with raw emotion.”—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob

Heroines, new edition

Heroines, new edition
Author: Kate Zambreno
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2024-03-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1635902096

A manifesto reclaiming the wives and mistresses of literary modernism that inspired a generation of writers and scholars, reissued after more than a decade. I am beginning to realize that taking the self out of our essays is a form of repression. Taking the self out feels like obeying a gag order—pretending an objectivity where there is nothing objective about the experience of confronting and engaging with and swooning over literature. On the last day of December 2009, Kate Zambreno, then an unpublished writer, began a blog called "Frances Farmer Is My Sister," arising from her obsession with literary modernism and her recent transplantation to Akron, Ohio, where her partner held a university job. Widely reposted, Zambreno's blog became an outlet for her highly informed and passionate rants and melancholy portraits of the fates of the modernist “wives and mistresses," reclaiming the traditionally pathologized biographies of Vivienne Eliot, Jane Bowles, Jean Rhys, and Zelda Fitzgerald: writers and artists themselves who served as male writers' muses only to end their lives silenced, erased, and institutionalized. Over the course of two years, Frances Farmer Is My Sister helped create a community of writers and devised a new feminist discourse of writing in the margins and developing an alternative canon. In Heroines, Zambreno extends the polemic begun on her blog into a dazzling, original work of literary scholarship. Combing theories that have dictated what literature should be and who is allowed to write it—she traces the genesis of a cultural template that consistently exiles feminine experience to the realm of the “minor,” and diagnoses women for transgressing social bounds. “ANXIETY: When she experiences it, it's pathological,” writes Zambreno. “When he does, it's existential.” With Heroines, Zambreno provided a model for a newly subjectivized criticism, prefiguring many group biographies and forms of autotheory and hybrid memoirs that were to come in the years to follow. A book that has become its own canon, Heroines was named one of the "50 Books that define the past 5 Years in Literature" by Flavorwire, an "Essential Feminist Manifesto" by Dazed, and one of the "50 Greatest Books by Women" in Buzzfeed.

Fallenness in Victorian Women's Writing

Fallenness in Victorian Women's Writing
Author: Deborah Anna Logan
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1998
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780826211750

Logan's study is distinguished by its exclusive focus on women writers, including Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Florence Nightingale, Sarah Grand, and Mary Prince. Logan utilizes primary texts from these Victorian writers as well as contemporary critics such as Catherine Gallagher and Elaine Showalter to provide the background on social factors that contributed to the construction of fallen-woman discourse.

Transcribing Class and Gender

Transcribing Class and Gender
Author: Carole Srole
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2010-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 047202664X

"Drawing upon census data, trade periodicals devoted to stenography and court reporting, the writings of educational reformers, and fiction, Srole allows us to better understand the roles that gender and work played in the formation of middle-class identity. Clearly written and thoroughly researched, her book reminds us of the contradictions that both men and women faced as they navigated changes in the labor market and sought to realize a modern professional identity." ---Thomas Augst, New York University Transcribing Class and Gender explores the changing meanings of clerical work in nineteenth-century America, focusing on the discourse surrounding that work. At a time when shorthand transcription was the primary method of documenting business and legal communications and transactions, most stenographers were men, but changing technology saw the emergence of women in the once male-dominated field. Carole Srole argues that this shift placed stenographers in a unique position to construct a new image of the professional man and woman and, in doing so, to redefine middle- and working-class identities. Many male court reporters emphasized their professionalism, portraying themselves as educated language experts as a way to elevate themselves above the growing numbers of female and working-class stenographers and typewriter operators. Meanwhile, women in the courts and offices were confronting the derogatory image of the so-called Typewriter Girl who cared more about her looks, clothing, and marriage prospects than her job. Like males in the field, women responded by fashioning a gendered professional image---one that served to combat this new version of degraded female labor while also maintaining traditional ideals of femininity. The study is unique in the way it reads and analyzes popular fiction, stenography trade magazines, the archives of professional associations, and writings by educational reformers to provide new perspectives on this history. The author challenges the common assumption that men and women clerks had separate work cultures and demonstrates how each had to balance elements of manhood and womanhood in the drive toward professionalism and the construction of a new middle-class image. Transcribing Class and Gender joins the recent scholarship that employs cultural studies approaches to class and gender without abandoning the social history valuation of workers' experiences. Carole Srole is Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Photo: A female stenographer working for an actuary in 1897. Courtesy Metlife Archives.

Common People

Common People
Author: Kit de Waal
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2019-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1783527471

Working-class stories are not always tales of the underprivileged and dispossessed. Common People is a collection of essays, poems and memoir written in celebration, not apology: these are narratives rich in barbed humour, reflecting the depth and texture of working-class life, the joy and sorrow, the solidarity and the differences, the everyday wisdom and poetry of the woman at the bus stop, the waiter, the hairdresser. Here, Kit de Waal brings together thirty-three established and emerging writers who invite you to experience the world through their eyes, their voices loud and clear as they reclaim and redefine what it means to be working class. Features original pieces from Damian Barr, Malorie Blackman, Lisa Blower, Jill Dawson, Louise Doughty, Stuart Maconie, Chris McCrudden, Lisa McInerney, Paul McVeigh, Daljit Nagra, Dave O’Brien, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Anita Sethi, Tony Walsh, Alex Wheatle and more.

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women
Author: Cheris Kramarae
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2050
Release: 2004-04-16
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1135963150

For a full list of entries and contributors, sample entries, and more, visit the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women website. Featuring comprehensive global coverage of women's issues and concerns, from violence and sexuality to feminist theory, the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women brings the field into the new millennium. In over 900 signed A-Z entries from US and Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and the Middle East, the women who pioneered the field from its inception collaborate with the new scholars who are shaping the future of women's studies to create the new standard work for anyone who needs information on women-related subjects.