Table of Contents
Foreword Toni Morrison xiii
Preface to the 2022 Edition xv
Preface xvii
Women and U.S. Literary Radicalism Paula Rabinowitz 1
Part I Fiction 17
Writing Red: Women's Short Fiction of the 1930s Paula Rabinowitz 19
Agnes Smedley
Shan-fei, Communist 30
Meridel Le Sueur
Sequel to Love 36
Ruth McKenney
From Industrial Valley 39
Leane Zugsmith
Room in the World 46
Edith Manuel Durham
Deepening Dusk 52
Lucille Boehm
Two-Bit Piece 67
Marita Bonner
The Whipping 70
Ramona Lowe
The Woman in the Window 79
Elizabeth Thomas
Our House 84
Eleanor Clark
Hurry, Hurry 89
Josephine Herbst
The Enemy 96
Tess Slesinger
The Mouse-Trap 106
Part II Poetry 125
Worlds Moving: Women, Poetry, and the Literary Politics of the 1930s Charlotte Nekola 127
Muriel Rukeyser
Ann Burlak 135
Absalom 139
More of a Corpse Than a Woman 142
Fifth Elegy: A Turning Wind 143
Genevieve Taggard
Try Tropic 147
Return of the Native 148
To My Mother 149
Silence in Mallorca 150
Proud Day 152
Autumn Song for Guitar 153
Creative Effort 154
Ode in Time of Crisis 155
Josephine W. Johnson
Under the Sound of Voices 157
He Who Shall Turn- 158
Ice Winter 159
Margaret Walker
For My People 161
Dark Blood 163
Lineage 164
Gladys Casely Hayford
The Palm Wine Seller 165
Kathleen Tankersley Young
All Things Insensible 167
Lucia Trent
Breed, Women, Breed 168
Lady in a Limousine 169
Parade the Narrow Turrets 170
Ruth Lechlitner
On the Wall to Your Left 171
Susan McMillan Shepherd
White Man's Blues 172
Mary LeDuc Gibbons
Mothers 173
Joy Davidman
This Woman 174
Twentieth-Century Americanism 175
Prayer Against Indifference 178
Tillie Olsen
I Want You Women Up North to Know 179
Florence Reece
Which Side Are You On? 182
Aunt Molly Jackson
I Am a Union Woman 184
The Hungry Blues 185
Part III Reportage, Theory, and Analysis 187
Worlds Unseen: Political Women Journalists and the 1930s Charlotte Nekola 189
Josephine Herbst
A Passport from Realengo 18 199
Agnes Smedley
The People in China 203
Anna Louise Strong
Fighters for Women's Rights 215
Front Trenches-Northwest 224
Ella Winter
Woman Freed 228
Ruth Gruber
Finding Women 236
Tillie Olsen
The Strike 245
Vivian Dahl
Them Women Sure Are Scrappers 252
Elaine Ellis
Women of the Cotton Fields 255
Mary Guimes Lear
Bessie: A Garment Strike Story 258
Ella Ford
We Are Mill People 264
Anonymous
My Life: A True Story by a Negro Worker of the South 270
And Mine: A True Story by a Negro Worker of the North 272
No More Helling! A True Story by a Working Woman 274
Mollie V. Lewis
Negro Women in Steel 276
Dorothy Day
A Good Landlord (An Interview with Our Janitress) 279
Thyra J. Edwards
Chicago in the Rain (Relief for Negro Homeless Men on the South Side) 282
Mary Heaton Vorse
School for Bums 285
Hard-Boiled 291
Myra Page
"Leave Them Meters Be!" 293
"Water!" 296
Meridel Le Sueur
The Fetish of Being Outside 299
Mary Inman
Manufacturing Femininity 304
The Pivot of the System 308
The Code of a Class 312
Rebecca Pitts
Women and Communism 316
Grace Hutchins
Women under Capitalism 329
The Double Burden 335
Contributors 341
Acknowledgments 347