| Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940 Contributor(s): Sharpless, Rebecca (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807847607 ISBN-13: 9780807847602 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $40.38 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 1999 Annotation: A moving account of womens lives on Texas cotton farms during the first half of the 20th-century, this book reveals their substantial contributions to the southern agricultural economy and to family life. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Women's Studies - History | United States - State & Local - General |
| Dewey: 305.409 |
| LCCN: 98-23630 |
| Series: Studies in Rural Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.93" H x 6.14" W x 9.24" (1.14 lbs) 352 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1900-1949 - Cultural Region - Deep South - Cultural Region - Gulf Coast - Cultural Region - South - Cultural Region - Southwest U.S. - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Demographic Orientation - Rural - Geographic Orientation - Texas - Sex & Gender - Feminine - Cultural Region - Mid-South |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Sharpless, Rebecca: - Rebecca Sharpless is director of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History in Waco, Texas. |