Synopses & Reviews
Hapke's book, remarkable in scope and inclusiveness, offers those concerned with American working people a mine of information about and analysis of the 'rich lived history of American laborers' as that has been represented in fictions of every kind. She provides an invaluable foundation for understanding the dirtiest of America's dirty big secrets: the pervasivness of class differences, class discrimination, indeed of class conflict in this, the wealthiest nation in history. Hers is an indispensable guided tour through more than a century and a half of literary representations of 'hands' at their looms, pikets on the line, agitators on their soapboxes, ordinary working women, men, and children in kitchens, parks, factories, and fields across America. --Paul Lauter, A.K. & G.M. Smith Professor of Literature, Trinity College Labor's Text sets over 150 years of the multi-ethnic literature of work in the context of the history that informed it--the history of labor organizing, of industrial change, of social transformations, and of shifting political alignments. Any scholar of American literature or American history cannot help but be enlightened by this boldly ambitious and illuminating book. -- Shelly Fisher Fishkin, professor of American studies, University of Texas, Austin Labor's Text traverses nearly two centuries of the U.S. literary response in fiction to workers and the work experience. Casting her net more broadly than any of her predecessors, Hapke's revision of the genre includes many recent writing not usually recognized as part of the tradition. Coming at a moment when there is a steady increase in interest about 'class' from color- and gender-inflected perspectives, this is a work of committed scholarship that may well prove to be a crucial compass to reorient the thinking and scholarship of a new generation. -- Alan Wald, author of Writing from the Left A stunning work of scholarship. . . . It is an extraordinary achievement and an immense contribution to working-class studies. --Janet Zandy, author of Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings Laura Hapke is a professor of English at Pace University. The winner of two Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Book awards, she is the author of Daughters of the Great Depression: Women, Work, and Fiction in the American 1930s and other books on labor fiction and working-class studies.
Review
andquot;Unfailingly provocative, this is an intelligent book noteworthy for its refusal to be mired in old approaches and its consequent ability to break new ground in the study of both working class fiction and the more general relationship of factory and artistic production.andquot;
Review
andquot;Troublemakers is an entirely commanding and engrossing study of the new forms of workers' control and representation that modern mass-industrial work made availableandmdash;rich and strange in archive, theoretically fresh and creative, historically acute.andquot;
Review
andquot;
Troublemakers is an original take that provides eyeopening insights about different ways acts of resistance by the mass worker, including a refusal to work, may be represented. Scott has added a polished contribution to the list of essential interpretations in the field.andquot;
Review
andquot;Troublemakers offers fascinating insight into the modes of resistance adopted by the mass industrial worker in America between the 1890s and the 1930s.andquot;
Synopsis
Labor's Text charts how the worker has been portrayed and often misrepresented in American fiction. Laura Hapke offers hundreds of depictions of wage earners: from fiction on the early artisan "aristocrats" to the Gilded Age's union-busting novelists to the year 2000's marginalized, apolitical men and women. Whether the authors discussed are pro- or anti-labor, Hapke illuminates the literary, historical, and intellectual contexts in which their fiction was produced and read.
Synopsis
William Scottandrsquo;s Troublemakers explores how a major change in the nature and forms of working-class power affected novels about U.S. industrial workers in the first half of the twentieth century. Analyzing portrayals of workers in such novels as Upton Sinclairandrsquo;s The Jungle, Ruth McKenneyandrsquo;s Industrial Valley, and Jack Londonandrsquo;s The Iron Heel, William Scott moves beyond narrow depictions of these laborers to show their ability to resist exploitation through their direct actionsandmdash;sit-down strikes, sabotage, and other spontaneous acts of rank-and-file andldquo;troublemakingandrdquo; on the jobandmdash;often carried out independently of union leadership.
Synopsis
William Scottandrsquo;s Troublemakers explores how a major change in the nature and forms of working-class power affected novels about U.S. industrial workers in the first half of the twentieth century. With the rise of mechanization and assembly-line labor from the 1890s to the 1930s, these laborers found that they had been transformed into a class of andldquo;massandrdquo; workers who, since that time, have been seen alternately as powerless, degraded victims or heroic, empowered icons who could rise above their oppression only through the help of representative organizations located outside the workplace.
Analyzing portrayals of workers in such novels as Upton Sinclairandrsquo;s The Jungle, Ruth McKenney's Industrial Valley, and Jack Londonandrsquo;s The Iron Heel, William Scott moves beyond narrow depictions of these laborers to show their ability to resist exploitation through their direct actionsandmdash;sit-down strikes, sabotage, and other spontaneous acts of rank-and-file andldquo;troublemakingandrdquo; on the jobandmdash;often carried out independently of union leadership. The novel of the mass industrial worker invites us to rethink our understanding of modern forms of representation through its attempts to imagine and depict workersandrsquo; agency in an environment where it appears to be completely suppressed.
About the Author
Laura Hapke is a professor of English at Pace University. The winner of two Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Book awards, she is the author of Daughters of the Great Depression: Women, Work, and Fiction in the American 1930s and other books on labor fiction and working-class studies.