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BOOKS
 | Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
You may know Barbara Kingsolver as a first-rate novelist (The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, Animal Dreams), but she's also a sensitive and original journalist. As a young reporter, Kingsolver was assigned to write an article about the Phelps Dodge copper mine strike in Arizona, a conflict that eventually turned into one of the most bitter, prolonged labor disputes of the late 20th century. Out of that experience came her first book, a mix of oral history and social commentary about Latinas whose lives were transformed by the strike. This moving account, largely in the women's own words, shares how they walked the picket lines, dealt with the threats of eviction from their homes, got arrested and yet kept their families together—all the while defying rampant racism and sexism. Available at The .™ |
 | Just Passing Through
In this wild and fictional adventure story tinged with a tad of truth, Paco Ignacio Taibo II (a contemporary Mexican writer who is one of the world's most popular detective novelists) encounters in Mexico a Spanish anarchist named Sebastian San Vicente. Just Passing Through ostensibly is an account, based on telegrams, letters and police files, of San Vicente's adventures in Mexico during the 1920s. He is at various times on the lam from the FBI, engaged as a revolutionary agitator, mechanic in Tampico and strike organizer with an opposition labor union in Mexico. A word of advice: Since there's no way to describe a book like this, ignore this review and get the book. Available from .™ |
MUSIC
 | Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields
"There are likely few occupational traditions that have inspired more songs than coal," writes Jon Lohman of the Virginia Folklife Program. He's right. This project of the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth in Wise County, Va., brings together on two CDs nearly 50 songs from the bituminous coalfields of southern Appalachia, along with a finely produced and illustrated book. Songs range from "Down in a Coal Mine," a bouncy 1908 vaudeville recording that sounds like it came straight out of an English dance hall, to Natalie Merchant's "Which Side Are You On?" the most haunting version of that old classic you'll ever hear. In between are gems like "Mining Camp Blues," sung in 1925 by the African American blues star Trixie Smith (and accompanied by a promising 25-year-old trumpeter named Louis Armstrong) and "Sixteen Tons," a grittier version of Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1950s hit. Available from the . |
DVD
 | Maquilapolis (City of Factories)
In this remarkable documentary, filmmakers Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre gave cameras and a six-week video training workshop to several women who work in Mexico's maquiladoras so they could record their lives. They show their kids at play, their lives at home and the neighborhood goats crossing a small bridge—but they also depict the direct effects of the profit-first maquiladora system, including dangerously polluted streams and skin rashes that never heal. "When I started working there, my nose used to bleed. I started having kidney trouble because they wouldn't let us drink water or go to the bathroom." They also talk about how they're trying to form a union, teaching each other and joining together to fight for their rights. Available from ™ and the . |
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