Hill Women

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region. “Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review) “A gritty, warm love letter to Appalachian communities and the resourceful women who lead them.”—Slate Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County, Kentucky, is one of the poorest places in the country. Buildings are crumbling as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women find creative ways to subsist in the hills. Through the women who raised her, Cassie Chambers traces her path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Granny’s daughter, Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish college. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated from the larger world. Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County. With her “hill women” values guiding her, she went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved home to help rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services. Appalachian women face issues from domestic violence to the opioid crisis, but they are also keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers breaks down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminates a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.

First published in 1984, this book filled an acknowledged gap in the social history of the eighteenth century. Drawing on newspapers, journals, memoirs, diaries, courtesy books, county surveys and records, it also does so on the literature of the period. It examines the role assigned to women in society and explores attitudes of the time and the real experience of women.

"In a world where girls can no longer wear pants, only skirts and hose; women's Sunday softball is discontinued; shorter rest periods on the job exist so that women can't socialize; and a ten o'clock curfew is created for increasing the protection for women - an exodus begins. This monumental move separates men and women, such that many women flee to the hills for freedom, while men remain in the cities." "Leading us through the women's shared stories of survival, remembrance, and self-discovery, Wanderground brings us years later to a future, present with spiritual awakening. Here, the hill women have gained telepathic abilities, unique flying and healing techniques, and go on tour duty to assist women in the cities still struggling for enlightenment."--Jacket

Histories of women in Hollywood usually recount the contributions of female directors, screenwriters, designers, actresses, and other creative personnel whose names loom large in the credits. Yet, from its inception, the American film industry relied on the labor of thousands more women, workers whose vital contributions often went unrecognized. Never Done introduces generations of women who worked behind the scenes in the film industry—from the employees’ wives who hand-colored the Edison Company’s films frame-by-frame, to the female immigrants who toiled in MGM’s backrooms to produce beautifully beaded and embroidered costumes. Challenging the dismissive characterization of these women as merely menial workers, media historian Erin Hill shows how their labor was essential to the industry and required considerable technical and interpersonal skills. Sketching a history of how Hollywood came to define certain occupations as lower-paid “women’s work,” or “feminized labor,” Hill also reveals how enterprising women eventually gained a foothold in more prestigious divisions like casting and publicity. Poring through rare archives and integrating the firsthand accounts of women employed in the film industry, the book gives a voice to women whose work was indispensable yet largely invisible. As it traces this long history of women in Hollywood, Never Done reveals the persistence of sexist assumptions that, even today, leave women in the media industry underpraised and underpaid. For more information: http://erinhill.squarespace.com

Proud and solitary, Eel Marsh House surveys the windswept reaches of the salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway. Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the house's sole inhabitant, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows. It is not until he glimpses a pale young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.

An indispensable guide for anyone who runs or participates in a book group, this title provides the structure and fun facts needed to examine the genre of women's fiction. Women's fiction covers numerous topics of importance in the lives of women—friendship, love, personal growth, and familial relationships. For this reason, the genre is a hotbed of engaging subjects for book group discussions. Reading Women: A Book Club Guide for Women's Fiction brings together information on over 100 women's fiction titles, providing everything a book group needs to encourage focused, stimulating meetings. Reading Women marshals information that has been, up to this point, either nonexistent or scattered in book club guides. Readers will learn the difference between women's fiction, romance, and chick lit, as well as why these genres provide a rich trove of discussion topics for book groups. Specific entries cover titles from all three genres, offering an author biography, a book summary, bibliographic material, discussion questions, and read-alike information for each book. An additional 50 titles suitable for book group discussions are listed with brief summaries.

As featured on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 5 Live Selected as one of the Independent’s 10 best pregnancy books for expectant parents Birth is a feminist issue. It’s the feminist issue nobody’s talking about.

“An elegant, impassioned demand that America see gender-based violence as a cultural and structural problem that hurts everyone, not just victims and survivors… It's at times downright virtuosic in the threads it weaves together.”—NPR Winner of the 2022 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Books From the woman who gave the landmark testimony against Clarence Thomas as a sexual menace, a new manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a powerful call to arms from one of our most prominent and poised survivors. In 1991, Anita Hill began something that's still unfinished work. The issues of gender violence, touching on sex, race, age, and power, are as urgent today as they were when she first testified. Believing is a story of America's three decades long reckoning with gender violence, one that offers insights into its roots, and paths to creating dialogue and substantive change. It is a call to action that offers guidance based on what this brave, committed fighter has learned from a lifetime of advocacy and her search for solutions to a problem that is still tearing America apart. We once thought gender-based violence--from casual harassment to rape and murder--was an individual problem that affected a few; we now know it's cultural and endemic, and happens to our acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family members, and it can be physical, emotional and verbal. Women of color experience sexual harassment at higher rates than White women. Street harassment is ubiquitous and can escalate to violence. Transgender and nonbinary people are particularly vulnerable. Anita Hill draws on her years as a teacher, legal scholar, and advocate, and on the experiences of the thousands of individuals who have told her their stories, to trace the pipeline of behavior that follows individuals from place to place: from home to school to work and back home. In measured, clear, blunt terms, she demonstrates the impact it has on every aspect of our lives, including our physical and mental wellbeing, housing stability, political participation, economy and community safety, and how our descriptive language undermines progress toward solutions. And she is uncompromising in her demands that our laws and our leaders must address the issue concretely and immediately.

Annotation "The first book to focus exclusively on studies of Appalachia's women, Beyond Hill and Hollow: Original Readings in Appalachian Women's Studies is a pathbreaking collection that firmly establishes the field of Appalachian women's studies. Bringing together the work of historians, linguists, sociologists, social workers, performance artists, literary critics, theater scholars, and others, the collection portrays the diverse cultures of Appalachian women." "Appropriate both as a reference and as a classroom text, Beyond Hill and Hollow expands our understanding of Appalachian women's lives."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved