Following the accidental death of her husband, Annie McKee is determined her boys will not grow up to work in the coal mines. It's been a struggle for the young widow to make ends meet, but she wants her sons to have a better life--far removed from Heather's Hollow, Kentucky. To give them that chance Annie needs a good job. And she needs the help of Patrick Kirkpatrick. Her husband's best friend offers to help Annie study for her general education degree, and things get complicated when she and Patrick realize they have feelings for each other. But how can Annie fall for a man who is determined to stay in the one place she must leave behind?
Women in the Mines informs, provokes and inspires from first page to last with gripping stories from coalfield women from 1914 to 1994. Early women miners describe handloading coal to help their families survive. The 1970s generation talks openly about sexual harassment, community attitudes, pregnancy, health and safety, racism, aging, and unemployment. The stories demonstrate the strength and resilience of women who accepted the challenge of nontraditional work and the changes in their lives brought by that decision.
Much has been written over the years about life in the coal mines of Appalachia. Not surprisingly, attention has focused mainly on the experiences of male miners. In Daughters of the Mountain, Suzanne Tallichet introduces us to a cohort of women miners at a large underground coal mine in southern West Virginia, where women entered the workforce in the late 1970s after mining jobs began opening up for women throughout the Appalachian coalfields. Tallichet's work goes beyond anecdotal evidence to provide complex and penetrating analyses of qualitative data. Based on in-depth interviews with female miners, Tallichet explores several key topics, including social relations among men and women, professional advancement, and union participation. She also explores the ways in which women adapt to mining culture, developing strategies for both resistance and accommodation to an overwhelmingly male-dominated world.
A diary account of thirteen-year-old Anetka's life in Poland in 1896, immigration to America, marriage to a coal miner, widowhood, and happiness in finally finding her true love.
Contrary to their masculine portrayal, mines have always employed women in valuable and productive roles. Yet, pit life continues to be represented as a masculine world of work, legitimizing men as the only mineworkers and large, mechanized, and capitalized operations as the only form of mining. Bringing together a range of case studies of women miners from past and present in Asia, the Pacific region, Latin America and Africa, this book makes visible the roles and contributions of women as miners. It also highlights the importance of engendering small and informal mining in the developing world as compared to the early European and American mines. The book shows that women are engaged in various kinds of mining and illustrates how gender and inequality are constructed and sustained in the mines, and also how ethnic identities intersect with those gendered identities.
The success of the Durham Coalfield and its important role in the Industrial Revolution is attributed to men of influence who owned the land and the pits, and men who worked in the coal-mining industry during the Victorian period. There has been very little written about the importance of the home life that supported the miners - their wives who, through heroic efforts, did their best to provide attractive, healthy, happy home for their husbands, often in appalling social conditions. To provide a welcoming atmosphere at home demanded tremendous resources and commitment from the miners' wives. Despite their many hardships these women selflessly put everyone in the family before themselves. They operated on less rest, less food at times of necessity and under the huge physical burden of work and the emotional burden of worry concerning the safety of their family. Women of the Durham Coalfield in the 19th Century: Hannah's Story addresses the lack of information about the role of women in the Durham Coalfield, engagingly explored through one woman's experience.
Few people in America today live with the dangers and deprivations that Appalachian coal mining families experience. But to the eighteen West Virginia women Carol Giesen interviewed for this book, hard times are just everyday life. These coal miners' wives, ranging in age from late teens to eighty-five, tell of a way of life dominated by coal mining—and shadowed by a constant fear of death or injury to a loved one. From birth to old age, they experience the social and economic pressures of the coal mining industry. Few families in these communities earn their living in any job outside a coal mine, and most young men and women find no advantage in completing their education. Women whose stresses and strengths have seldom been disclosed reveal here their personal stories, their understanding of the dangers of coal mining, their domestic concerns, the place of friends and faith in their lives, and their expectations of the future. What emerges is a deeply moving story of determination in the face of adversity. Over and over, these women deal with the frustrations caused by strikes, layoffs, and mine closings, often taking any jobs they can find while their husbands are out of work. Endlessly; their home concerns revolve around protecting their husbands from additional work or worry. Always there is fear for their husbands' lives and the pervasive anger they feel toward the mining companies. For some, there is also the pain of losing a loved one to the mines. Behind these women's acceptance of their circumstances lies a pragmatic understanding of the politics of mining and of the communities in which they live. Giesen's insights into the experiences of miners' wives contribute much to our understanding of the impact of industry, economics, and politics on women's lives.
Few people in America today live with the dangers and deprivations that Appalachian coal mining families experience. But to the eighteen West Virginia women Carol Giesen interviewed for this book, hard times are just everyday life. These coal miners' wives, ranging in age from late teens to eighty-five, tell of a way of life dominated by coal mining—and shadowed by a constant fear of death or injury to a loved one. From birth to old age, they experience the social and economic pressures of the coal mining industry. Few families in these communities earn their living in any job outside a coal mine, and most young men and women find no advantage in completing their education. Women whose stresses and strengths have seldom been disclosed reveal here their personal stories, their understanding of the dangers of coal mining, their domestic concerns, the place of friends and faith in their lives, and their expectations of the future. What emerges is a deeply moving story of determination in the face of adversity. Over and over, these women deal with the frustrations caused by strikes, layoffs, and mine closings, often taking any jobs they can find while their husbands are out of work. Endlessly; their home concerns revolve around protecting their husbands from additional work or worry. Always there is fear for their husbands' lives and the pervasive anger they feel toward the mining companies. For some, there is also the pain of losing a loved one to the mines. Behind these women's acceptance of their circumstances lies a pragmatic understanding of the politics of mining and of the communities in which they live. Giesen's insights into the experiences of miners' wives contribute much to our understanding of the impact of industry, economics, and politics on women's lives.
Growing up in a mining family, Cath's husband Doug promised his father he wouldn't follow in his dangerous footsteps. But after struggling with terrible poverty in 1970s Scotland, Doug decided a pit job would provide his wife and young family much needed security, despite extraordinary risks to life and limb. Every day, Cath kissed her husband goodbye, not knowing if she'd see him again as he went to work at the coalface. And while her husband toiled deep below, the mother-of-five put her cooking and cleaning skills to use in the colliery canteen. In good times and bad, the miner's wives pulled together as much as their men underground. Then Thatcher swept to power and suddenly loyalties were tested and a fight for survival of a different kind ensued. One for their very existence.
Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first non-fiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment which occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters. Hundreds of families held the line in the 1983 strike against Phelps Dodge Copper in Arizona. After more than a year the strikers lost their union certification, but the battle permanently altered the social order in these small, predominantly Hispanic mining towns. At the time the strike began, many women said they couldn't leave the house without their husband's permission. Yet, when injunctions barred union men from picketing, their wives and daughters turned out for the daily picket lines. When the strike dragged on and men left to seek jobs elsewhere, women continued to picket, organize support, and defend their rights even when the towns were occupied by the National Guard. "Nothing can ever be the same as it was before," said Diane McCormick of the Morenci Miners Women's Auxiliary. "Look at us. At the beginning of this strike, we were just a bunch of ladies."
