Tamiment has many works in which women workers and activists discuss and analyze their jobs, lives, politics, etc., in a variety of endeavors. Included here are works by well-known organizers and reformers like Rose Schneiderman and Florence Kelley, as well as by unsung grass-roots leaders and rank-and-file workers. The experiences represented range across the 20th century and across many fields of industrial and service work and varieties of political organizing.
Please note that the lives of several of the authors listed below are the subject of various Biographies.
PS3531.A235 Z52 1996 Baker, Christina Looper. In a Generous Spirit: A First-Person Biography of Myra Page. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Narrative of the life of a middle-class Southern woman who became a radical novelist and journalist. This genre-bending text interweaves Page's letters, prose, journalism, and oral recollections to construct a unified autobiographical voice.
HX84.B45 A3 1940 Bloor, Ella Reeve. We Are Many: An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers, 1940. Life story of important female leftist activist and founding member of the Communist Party USA.
HD6073.A82 C23 1999 De Santis, Solange. Life on the Line: One Woman's Tale of Work, Sweat, and Survival. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Account of life on a General Motors assembly line in Ontario by a woman who traded her journalism career for auto work. Explores themes of bureaucracy, union and work culture, and physical exhaustion on the job.
HV9474.A44 F55 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political
Prisoner. New York: International Publishers, 1963. Famous radical's account of her time spent
in the Federal Reformatory for Women, Alderson, W. Va., as a Communist under the Smith Act.
HX84.F5 A3 _____. I Speak My Own Piece. New York: Masses & Mainstream, 1955.
Recounts Flynn's life from childhood to 1927, including her socialism, her leadership in the
IWW and participation in famous strikes (1909 Shirtwaist Strike in New York City; Paterson
Silk Strike of 1913; Great Steel Strike of 1919), and her defense of civil liberties.
HX84.F5 A3 1973 _____. The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life,
1906-1926. New York: International Publishers, 1973. Revised edition of I Speak My Own Piece.
See also Flynn's personal papers, under Archival Manuscript Collections.
HD6053 .H67 Hourwich, Andria Taylor, and Gladys L. Palmer, eds. "I Am A Woman Worker": A Scrapbook of Autobiographies. NY: Affiliated Schools for Workers, Inc., 1936. Accounts of their work lives by women attending the Affiliated Schools for Workers. Subjects discussed include looking for work, life on the job, management anti-unionism, union organizing, and strikes.
HD8073.J6 A3 Jones, Mother. Autobiography of Mother Jones. Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Co., 1925. Life story of the famous radical and labor organizer. Though known most for her work in the coal industry, she also organized in steel, metal mining, railroads, and textiles.
HD6073.A38 K36 Kane, Paula, with Christopher Chandler. Sex Objects in the Sky: A Personal Account of the Stewardess Rebellion. Chicago: Follett Pub. Co., 1974. A former flight attendant's memoir of her eventual disillusionment with her stereotyped occupation and participation in feminist protests against stewardesses' sexual objectification.
HN57.K4 A3 1986 Kelley, Florence. Notes of Sixty Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley, with an Early Essay by the Author on the Need of Theoretical Preparation for Philanthropic Work. Edited and intro. by Kathryn Kish Sklar. Chicago: Published for the Illinois Labor History Society by C.H. Kerr Pub. Co., 1986. Originally published as a series of four essays in Survey Magazine, 1926-1927. Experiences of feminist and socialist who pioneered consumer organizing for industrial reform with the turn-of the-century National Consumer's League and worked for protective labor legislation for women workers.
HD6095.N37 A3 Nestor, Agnes. Woman's Labor Leader, An Autobiography. Rockford, Ill.: Bellevue Books Pub. Co., 1954. Life story of Glove Workers Union leader, longtime campaigner for shorter workday, and President of the Chicago Women's Trade Union League from 1913 until her death in 1948.
HD6073.R22 U66 1990 Niemann, Linda. Boomer: Railroad Memoirs.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
HD6073.R12 U66 1997 _____. On the Rails: A Memoir. 2nd ed. Pittsburgh:
Cleis Press, 1997.
In these first and second editions, Niemann recounts her experiences and attempts to
reconstruct her life while railroading on South Pacific, where she was hired as a conductor in 1979.
HD8073.P4 A3 Pesotta, Rose. Bread Upon the Waters. Edited by John Nicholas Beffel. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1944. Autobiography of Russian immigrant and ILGWU leader; also organized in auto, rubber, and mining. Covers much of the labor strife of the 1930s and 1940s, and discusses dealing with differences among diverse work force.
HD8073.S27 A3 1990 Scarborough, Mary Gosman. Whirlwinds of Danger: The Memoirs of Mary Gosman Scarborough. New York: David Walker Press, 1990. Writings, recollections, and oral history of Russian immigrant who worked in garment and auto industries, and led Unemployment Councils and organized in Detroit's African-American community during the Great Depression.
HD6079 .S3 Schneiderman, Rose, with Lucy Goldthwaite. All for One. New York, P. S. Eriksson, 1967. Well-known reformer and labor leader discusses her time as department store cashier, machine operative in cap factory, founder of Cap Makers' Union (1903), organizer and eventually president of the New York WTUL, suffragette, Secretary of New York State Department of Labor, and only woman on Labor Advisory Board of NRA of the New Deal. See also Schneiderman's personal papers, under Archival Manuscript Collections.
HQ1413.S69 A3 1992 Stokes, Rose Pastor. I Belong to the Working Class: The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes. Edited by Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Describes work life, personal life, and activist career of Polish immigrant, cigarmaker and socialist in the early 20th century, and the opportunities and tensions brought by her marriage to a millionaire socialist. See also Stokes' personal papers, under Archival Manuscript Collections.
HE4491.N65 S94 1998 Swerdlow, Marian. Underground Woman: My Four Years as a New York City Subway Conductor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. Experiences of four years on New York subways by one of the city's first white women to work among mostly male and minority conductors.
HD6509.W54 W54 1991 Wieck, David Thoreau. Woman from Spillertown: A Memoir of Agnes Burns Wieck. With a foreword by Thomas Dublin. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. Biography/autobiography/memoir of coal industry organizer ("The Mother Jones of Illinois") who often focused on mobilizing women in mining families. Based on Wieck's personal writings (letters, diaries) and Anarchist author's remembrances of growing up as son of an activist mother.
PS3547.E95 Z53 Yezierska, Anzia. Red Ribbon on a White Horse. New York: Scribner, 1950. Autobiography of Polish immigrant who rose from tenements and sweatshops of NYC's Lower East Side to prominence as novelist and to material affluence in Hollywood film work, but returned to humbler life and spiritual roots of her childhood in New York.