JUNE 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Em Grosland keeps these riveting stories of labor organizing moving along at a consistent, somewhat rhythmic pace that nicely complements the writing. This sympathetic survey of the labor movement examines union drives in several occupational categories, including mill workers, garment workers, workers with disabilities, and prisoners. While the audiobook is pro union, it does not shy away from looking at the objectionable aspects of some labor organizations, which include racism, sexism, and homophobia. Grosland’s choice to keep the narration low-key works well. A fascinating listen. G.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
03/28/2022
Journalist and union organizer Kelly debuts with a rousing look at the contributions of marginalized groups to the U.S. labor movement. She begins by placing the “middle-aged Black warehouse workers” who tried to unionize an Amazon fulfillment center in Alabama in 2021 within a “long lineage of working class heroes,” including the 19th-century female mill workers who fought for a workday shorter than 16 hours. Kelly also recounts how an 1881 strike by Black laundresses in Atlanta brought the city’s laundry services to a halt on the eve of the International Cotton Exposition, and profiles U.S. labor secretary Frances Perkins, who helped enshrine workplace protections in New Deal legislation after having witnessed the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Elsewhere, Kelly examines how convict leasing helped prop up the South’s “faltering post-Confederate economy” and sketches the history of the 1891–1892 Coal Creek War in Tennessee, when “involuntary, incarcerated laborers” were brought in as strikebreakers but were freed repeatedly by the miners they were meant to replace. Shedding new light on key players and episodes within a diverse range of industries—from textile and trucking to sex work—this invigorating labor history is also a powerful call for today’s workers to fight for their rights. Agent: Chad Luibl, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
This history of American labor places today's resurgence of union activity in the context of past struggles... [Kelly] makes it possible to see resonances across history and locale.”
—The New Yorker
“Kelly unearths the stories of the people—farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees—behind some of the labor movement’s biggest successes.”
—The New York Times
Fight Like Hell is an electrifying, inspiring history of how countless American industries have exploited employees of marginalized backgrounds, and how these workers protected one another and fought back."
—Buzzfeed
“You’ll never look at American history the same way again.”
—Esquire
"The stories in Fight Like Hell remind us again and again that change is possible... if only we stick together."
—LitHub
“Kim Kelly's debut is a knockout... Catalyzed by a passionate voice and brisk pacing, Fight Like Hell will leave you with a renewed sense of readiness in your bones.”
—Morgan Jerkins, New York Times Bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing, Wandering in Strange Lands, and Caul Baby
“As Kim Kelly writes in her book, every story is a labor story. [Fight Like Hell] offers a fuller picture of the history of labor in America and shows how fights previously not considered labor fights were in fact battles for workers' rights, whether it was abolishing slavery, liberating women, ensuring those disabled by work got fair treatment and those born with disabilities had a chance at a fair wage.”
—Eric Garcia, author of We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation
“In FIGHT LIKE HELL you'll find the true stories of people who have fought to win a better world for themselves and everyone else who has to work for a living.”
—Jeremy Brecher, author of National Bestseller Strike!
“Meticulously researched and beautifully told, [in FIGHT LIKE HELL] Kim Kelly has established herself as a true champion for the working class.”
—Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO President
Library Journal
★ 04/01/2022
Kelly's sweeping history of the American labor movement casts a wide swath from the trailblazing Pawtucket women weavers' mill turnout in 1824, to the 2020 effort to organize Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, AL. Focusing on women and workers of color, invariably low-paid physical laborers, Kelly's episodic survey details workplace contributions of usually ignored but essential folk. She marches with fiery Jewish girls in New York's garment district, with women on the picket lines of southern mills, and with Black workers in Appalachian mines. She reaches across the country, covering disabled workers, sex workers, and prisoners' work, and the diversified labor of Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Pacific Islander workers, particularly immigrants, in the fields and factories and on the rails and roads. S Kelly lauds revolutionaries and freedom fighters across class, gender, and race lines (Lucy Parsons; Mother Jones; Dr. Marie Equi; Cesar Chavez; Dorothy Lee Bolden) as vanguard workers who pushed for change in working conditions, psychology, and in society to redress capitalism's cruelties. VERDICT This accessible, inspiring, and instructive read belongs in school libraries, in university classrooms, and in general readers' hands for its lessons about workers' united power and the unfinished business of workplace justice.—Thomas J. Davis
JUNE 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Em Grosland keeps these riveting stories of labor organizing moving along at a consistent, somewhat rhythmic pace that nicely complements the writing. This sympathetic survey of the labor movement examines union drives in several occupational categories, including mill workers, garment workers, workers with disabilities, and prisoners. While the audiobook is pro union, it does not shy away from looking at the objectionable aspects of some labor organizations, which include racism, sexism, and homophobia. Grosland’s choice to keep the narration low-key works well. A fascinating listen. G.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
