Autoren-Bilder
2+ Werke 48 Mitglieder 1 Rezension

Über den Autor

Elizabeth Clark-Lewis is director of the Public History Program at Howard University and co-producer of the award-winning video freedom Bags.

Werke von Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Zugehörige Werke

To Toil the Livelong Day: America's Women at Work, 1780-1980 (1987) — Mitwirkender — 22 Exemplare

Getagged

Wissenswertes

Geschlecht
female

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

An engaging and unique book “giving voice” to women who worked as domestic servants in Washington, D.C. during the first half of the twentieth century. Elizabeth Clark Lewis conducted 123 detailed interviews recording women’s own accounts of their lives in the south before coming to D.C., the family decisions for them to move, the work they did, and their shift from live-in jobs to day-work. As Amanda says of Tera Hunter’s Joy to My Freedom, “it is impossible not to be moved and outraged by the tale of these women’s struggles.”

Lewis arranges excerpts from the women’s stories into chapters organized around different periods in their lives. I learned much from their depictions of their childhood in the deep south when they were put to work and given responsibility at unbelievably young ages and how they went north less of their own volition than out of the survival needs of their extended families. I had no idea how laundresses served as role models for live-in servants, giving them suggestions for gaining day jobs.

But the truth of the women’s stories is not necessarily the larger truth about black women as domestic servants or about black women’s history more generally. As bell hooks says, “All too often in our society, it is assumed that one can know about black people by merely hearing the life story and opinions of one black person.” (Ain’t I a Woman, 11)

Read more of my review on my blog: me, you and books
http://mdbrady.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/living-in-living-out-by-elizabeth-clark-...
… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
mdbrady | Feb 8, 2012 |

Auszeichnungen

Dir gefällt vielleicht auch

Nahestehende Autoren

Statistikseite

Werke
2
Auch von
1
Mitglieder
48
Beliebtheit
#325,720
Bewertung
3.0
Rezensionen
1
ISBNs
5