As a single mother haunted by painful memories from her own traumatic childhood, Hadiyah Joan Carlyle pioneered as one of the first women since World War II to enter the trades as a union welder. For Hadiyah, welding became a metaphor for healing from the dark past as well as a path to self-reliance and economic survival. While providing insightful perspective on the culture of the 1960's and 1970's , Torch in the Dark offers profound inspiration for anyone struggling with issues of abuse and oppression.
Torch in the Dark: One Woman's Journey
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Carlyle's Torch in the Dark is lyrical, poignant and riveting. Any library of American lives should include this one. --Priscilla Long, The Writer's Portable Mentor
Hadiyah pulls her life together in a Bellingham shipyard using a welding rod and a tough as nails attitude... No one has even come close to the depth and detail of the sixties that Carlyle reaches. --Jack Remick, The Deification and Blood
In prose as hot as her welding torch, Hadiyah Carlyle transports the reader to a time early in the women's movement that must never be forgotten. As one of the first female welders in the West Coast shipyards, Carlyle paved the way for women working in the trades today. You will applaud her strength in sharing this powerful story. --Arleen Williams, The Thirty-Ninth Victim
Hadiyah pulls her life together in a Bellingham shipyard using a welding rod and a tough as nails attitude... No one has even come close to the depth and detail of the sixties that Carlyle reaches. --Jack Remick, The Deification and Blood
In prose as hot as her welding torch, Hadiyah Carlyle transports the reader to a time early in the women's movement that must never be forgotten. As one of the first female welders in the West Coast shipyards, Carlyle paved the way for women working in the trades today. You will applaud her strength in sharing this powerful story. --Arleen Williams, The Thirty-Ninth Victim
About the Author
Activist, hiker, devoted grandmother, Hadiyah Joan Carlyle lives in Seattle, where she delights in the wild beauty of the Northwest while remaining connected to her gritty urban East Coast roots. Though welding is no longer a part of her life, she continues to carry the torch fro the empowerment of the oppressed.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By kakie
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book kept my interest and left me wanting the next chapter. It is well written, found one typo, but used techniques to peak your interest. This book is not a feel good story but intensely personal and touches you deeply emotionally. Only a brave, strong, and intelligent woman could write this.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By JRBT
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Tightly written, no excuses, no apologies. I expected to read a story I have heard many times, but it isn't. It's crafted to keep us turning pages. I like reading memoirs; yet, I usually prepare myself to either slog through some mawkish self pity or to accept the sense of incredibility that happens when the storyteller is detached. Carlyle avoids both in "Torch in the Dark". Instead, she shows us her unexamined childhood feelings as moments of memory throughout the book. This gave me the opportunity to make sense of some of her choices without undue judgment or pity. She is a remarkable woman. I love that she shows it to us through her behavior with no proselytizing.
Format:Paperback
Born to a striving Jewish family in Newark, NJ, Joan Carlyle came of age in the 1960's. Her journey from the Greenwich Village to the Haight took her through movements, communes and cults and finally into the trades, when she became one of the first qualified women welders working in a shipyard since World War 2. Along the way, she came to terms with personal issues, and bore and raised on her own a son (who has become a rising political star in Washington State).
"Torch in the Dark" tells the author's story through a series of tightly crafted vignettes and flashbacks. As many women of her era, Joan Carlyle was raised without defined ambition or skills, even the domestic ones. Estranged from her parents, she often felt alone and out of place. She entered adulthood not knowing who she was. She drifted and drifted. Her stories remind us how "freedom" isn't always free. Eventually she became an activist, a mother and a welder.
The memoir can be a demanding literary form. The author needs at one and the same time to dig deep and remain detached. Hadiyah Joan Carlyle worked hard over a decade to develop and hone her ability to accomplish both of these things. She has largely succeeded and has delivered a taught, wrenching, sometimes inspiring and sometimes cathartic personal account of what it took for her to come into her own.
"Torch in the Dark" tells the author's story through a series of tightly crafted vignettes and flashbacks. As many women of her era, Joan Carlyle was raised without defined ambition or skills, even the domestic ones. Estranged from her parents, she often felt alone and out of place. She entered adulthood not knowing who she was. She drifted and drifted. Her stories remind us how "freedom" isn't always free. Eventually she became an activist, a mother and a welder.
The memoir can be a demanding literary form. The author needs at one and the same time to dig deep and remain detached. Hadiyah Joan Carlyle worked hard over a decade to develop and hone her ability to accomplish both of these things. She has largely succeeded and has delivered a taught, wrenching, sometimes inspiring and sometimes cathartic personal account of what it took for her to come into her own.
Format:Paperback
Torch in the Dark provides a fresh look at the hippy era through the eyes of someone whose life depended on it. The people Joan Carlysle meets after the mental hospital give her shelter and an accepting community. While her path out of "the crazies" was drug-ridden and seemingly irratic, it was never as risky as the more conventional life she left behind. With stunning immediacy and a compelling story, Hadiyah Joan Carlysle shines a light for others who have been traumatized and are groping for selfhood and sanity. For anyone who enjoys memoir, it is a good read.
