Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices PDF Author: Rebecca Sharpless
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807876135
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book

Book Description
Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold. Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, Rebecca Sharpless weaves a moving account of women's lives on Texas cotton farms. She examines how women from varying ethnic backgrounds--German, Czech, African American, Mexican, and Anglo-American--coped with difficult circumstances. The food they cooked, the houses they kept, the ways in which they balanced field work with housework, all yield insights into the twentieth-century South. And though rural women's lives were filled with routines, many of which were undone almost as soon as they were done, each of their actions was laden with importance, says Sharpless, for the welfare of a woman's entire family depended heavily upon her efforts.

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices PDF Author: Rebecca Sharpless
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807876135
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book

Book Description
Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold. Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, Rebecca Sharpless weaves a moving account of women's lives on Texas cotton farms. She examines how women from varying ethnic backgrounds--German, Czech, African American, Mexican, and Anglo-American--coped with difficult circumstances. The food they cooked, the houses they kept, the ways in which they balanced field work with housework, all yield insights into the twentieth-century South. And though rural women's lives were filled with routines, many of which were undone almost as soon as they were done, each of their actions was laden with importance, says Sharpless, for the welfare of a woman's entire family depended heavily upon her efforts.

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices PDF Author: Mary Rebecca Sharpless
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blacklands (Tex.)
Languages : en
Pages : 924

Get Book

Book Description


Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens PDF Author: Rebecca Sharpless
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807899496
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home.

Women in Texas History

Women in Texas History PDF Author: Angela Boswell
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623497078
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
Winner, 2019 Liz Carpenter Award, sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) In recent decades, a small but growing number of historians have dedicated their tireless attention to analyzing the role of women in Texas history. Each contribution—and there have been many—represents a brick in the wall of new Texas history. From early Native societies to astronauts, Women in Texas History assembles those bricks into a carefully crafted structure as the first book to cover the full scope of Texas women’s history. By emphasizing the differences between race and ethnicity, Angela Boswell uses three broad themes to tie together the narrative of women in Texas history. First, the physical and geographic challenges of Texas as a place significantly affected women’s lives, from the struggles of isolated frontier farming to the opportunities and problems of increased urbanization. Second, the changing landscape of legal and political power continued to shape women’s lives and opportunities, from the ballot box to the courthouse and beyond. Finally, Boswell demonstrates the powerful influence of social and cultural forces on the identity, agency, and everyday life of women in Texas. In challenging male-dominated legal and political systems, Texan women shaped (and were shaped by) class, religion, community organizations, literary and artistic endeavors, and more. Women in Texas History is the first book to narrate the entire span of Texas women’s history and marks a major achievement in telling the full story of the Lone Star State. Historians and general readers alike will find this book an informative and enjoyable read for anyone interested in the history of Texas or the history of women.

Texas, Cotton, And The New Deal

Texas, Cotton, And The New Deal PDF Author: Keith Joseph Volanto
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585444021
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
Cotton growing-Government policy-Texas-Historly 2. Cotton trade-government policy-Texas-History. 3. New Deal1933-1939-Texas. 4. United States.

Twentieth-century Texas

Twentieth-century Texas PDF Author: John Woodrow Storey
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574412450
Category : Texas
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of fifteen essays which cover Indians, Mexican Americans, African Americans, women, religion, war on the homefront, music, literature, film, art, sports, philanthropy, education, the environment, and science and technology in twentieth-century Texas.

Every Choice Has a Consequence

Every Choice Has a Consequence PDF Author: Chuck Gallagher
Publisher: Lifepaths Publishing
ISBN: 9780979461064
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Get Book

Book Description
In the prime of his life, amid a soaring career, Chuck Gallagher made some poor ethical choices that landed him behind bars. In this deeply personal and compelling book, he comes clean about his life-changing experience. Although Chuck's prison was a physical one, he reveals how some of us unknowingly create our own "prisons" through the negative choices we make and how the consequences of those decisions impact happiness and success in every aspect of our lives. While most people would say they make ethical choices, it's all too clear in the corporate world the simplicity of making a wrong choice can lead to disastrous consequences. Gallagher engages the reader in a journey, through a brutally honest story, of how easy it is to stray off the ethical path and what it takes for organizations to help keep their most valued asset -- their people -- on the ethical highway. His insights provide a framework for business and personal success, helping the reader look deeply inside to find the strength to make the right choices. His book is a reminder to us all about choices we make and consequences we face -- and how we can ensure our personal and professional pursuits lead us to achieve our goals.

The Routledge History of Rural America

The Routledge History of Rural America PDF Author: Pamela Riney-Kehrberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135054983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book

Book Description
First published in 2014. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Work, Family, and Faith

Work, Family, and Faith PDF Author: Melissa Walker
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826265081
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book

Book Description
"Collection of essays capturing the transformation of the American South from agrarian to industrial/commercial over the course of the twentieth century from the perspective of women struggling against poverty by relying on tradition and inner strength"--Provided by publisher.

Unprotected Labor

Unprotected Labor PDF Author: Vanessa H. May
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807877905
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
Through an analysis of women's reform, domestic worker activism, and cultural values attached to public and private space, Vanessa May explains how and why domestic workers, the largest category of working women before 1940, were excluded from labor protections that formed the foundation of the welfare state. Looking at the debate over domestic service from both sides of the class divide, Unprotected Labor assesses middle-class women's reform programs as well as household workers' efforts to determine their own working conditions. May argues that working-class women sought to define the middle-class home as a workplace even as employers and reformers regarded the home as private space. The result was that labor reformers left domestic workers out of labor protections that covered other women workers in New York between the late nineteenth century and the New Deal. By recovering the history of domestic workers as activists in the debate over labor legislation, May challenges depictions of domestics as passive workers and reformers as selfless advocates of working women. Unprotected Labor illuminates how the domestic-service debate turned the middle-class home inside out, making private problems public and bringing concerns like labor conflict and government regulation into the middle-class home.