As consumers, farm women bargained with peddlers at their backdoors. A key business for many farm women was the "butter and egg trade"--small-scale dairying and raising chickens. Their earnings provided a crucial margin of economic safety for many families during the 1920s and 1930s and offered women some independence from their men folks. These innovative women showed that poultry production paid off and laid the foundation for the agribusiness poultry industry that emerged after World War II. Jones also examines the relationships between farm women and home demonstration agents and the effect of government-sponsored rural reform. She discusses the professional culture that developed among white agents as they reconciled new and old ideas about women's roles and shows that black agents, despite prejudice, linked their clients to valuable government resources and gave new meanings to traditions of self-help, mutual aid, and racial uplift.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Farm women of the twentieth-century South have been portrayed as oppressed, worn out, and isolated. Lu Ann Jones tells quite a different story in Mama Learned Us to Work. Building upon evocative oral histories, she encourages us to understand these women as consumers, producers, and agents of economic and cultural change.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Jones's exhaustive research and careful analysis vividly recreates country life in the first half of the twentieth century. Mama Learned Us to Work focuses on the hopes, dreams, and immense resourcefulness of southern rural women, who were at the center of sweeping rural transformation. (Pete Daniel, National Museum of American History)"
About the Author
Lu Ann Jones teaches history at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and is a coauthor of Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mama Learned Us to Work,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South (Studies in Rural Culture) (Paperback)
This book has a great picture cover and the title catches ones attention. The book is about rural women doing what it takes to survive. Very interesting.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
FEW STRANGERS CROSSED the hardscrabble landscape that Harry Crews evoked in his memoir of childhood in south Georgia during the 1930s and 1940s. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
black home agents, black farm agents, home demonstration work, black home demonstration agents, anything she could sell, southern farm women, professional paradoxes, home demonstration clubs, rolling stores, print bags, microforms collection, black agents, district agent, poultry raisers, feed dealers, curb market, soap wrappers, chicken business, extension officials, cotton council, itinerant merchants, white agents, agriculture officials, farm men, cotton bags Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
North Carolina, African Americans, Pauline Smith, South Carolina, Beaufort County, New South, New York, World War, Vanona Patterson, Wayne County, Julia Stokes, Madison County, Record Group, Tar Heel, Tomato Club, Carteret County, Gates County, Johnston County, Progressive Farmer, Smith-Lever Act, Wilkes County, Columbus County, East Tennessee, Jennie Moton, John Ward New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
FEW STRANGERS CROSSED the hardscrabble landscape that Harry Crews evoked in his memoir of childhood in south Georgia during the 1930s and 1940s. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
black home agents, black farm agents, home demonstration work, black home demonstration agents, anything she could sell, southern farm women, professional paradoxes, home demonstration clubs, rolling stores, print bags, microforms collection, black agents, district agent, poultry raisers, feed dealers, curb market, soap wrappers, chicken business, extension officials, cotton council, itinerant merchants, white agents, agriculture officials, farm men, cotton bags Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
North Carolina, African Americans, Pauline Smith, South Carolina, Beaufort County, New South, New York, World War, Vanona Patterson, Wayne County, Julia Stokes, Madison County, Record Group, Tar Heel, Tomato Club, Carteret County, Gates County, Johnston County, Progressive Farmer, Smith-Lever Act, Wilkes County, Columbus County, East Tennessee, Jennie Moton, John Ward New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 43
books:
See all 43 books this book cites
2
books
cite this book:
- Guide to Photographic Collections at the Smithsonian Institution: Volume I by DIANE VOGT OCONNOR on 6 pages
- Hidden Histories of Women in the New South (SOUTHERN WOMEN) by Virginia Bernhard in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 by Pete R. Daniel in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Sweet Beulah Land by Bernice Kelly Harris in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998 by Ted Ownby in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 43 books this book cites
- Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall in Back Matter
- Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing by John Egerton in Back Matter
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
