“Tore up and A-Movin”: Perspectives on the Work of Black and Poor White Women in the Rural South, 1865-1940

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Jones
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Rural South ◽  
Poor White

From “The Rise of Southern Redneck and White Trash Writers”1

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Bledsoe
Keyword(s):  
Southern Literature ◽  
White Women ◽  
White Men ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
White Trash ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Poor White ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New Generation

This chapter discusses the emergence of a new generation of southern writers who are giving voice to a different group of southerners, forcing their readers to reexamine long-held stereotypes and beliefs while challenging the literary roles traditionally assigned poor whites. According to Linda Tate, “traditionally, southern literature has been understood to be that written by white men and, on rare occasions, by white women—and, in almost all cases, by and about white southerners of the upper middle class.” This chapter looks at three new voices who write about the Rough South and the southern poor whites from within the class: Dorothy Allison, Larry Brown, and Timothy Reese McLaurin. The term “Rough South” refers to as the world of the redneck or white trash. The terms “redneck,” “white trash,” “cracker,” and “poor white” have all been used to describe certain white southerners.

Never Happier in Her Life

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Allison Dorothy Fredette
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
White Women ◽  
Social Ethic ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Border Culture ◽  
Poor White

This chapter explores the lives of working-class and poor white women of the border South. Their story reveals the potential of border culture—how it gave a voice and agency to women whose stories could be more easily suppressed in a less fluid community. The border created fertile ground for ideas of mutuality and individualism. While this led many to pursue friendship, love, and partnership in their relationships, elite and middle-class husbands and wives of the border South still often adhered to a social ethic which dictated certain gendered behaviors to men and women. In working-class society, however, these philosophies gave women a greater sense of independence and authority, allowing them to push the boundaries of the household and assert themselves in new ways.

Between Girls: Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster and Friendship as a Monologic Formulation

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
SHARON MONTEITH
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
American South ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Poor White ◽  
The American South ◽  
Direct Correspondence

In the work of contemporary writers who explore the racial and social geography of growing up in the American South, fleeting encounters between white and black girls abound but enduring friendships prove to be more problematic to represent. In Ellen Foster (1987), Ellen and Starletta's association stretches across the novel whereas, most frequently in fictions, the points at which black and white women converge and relate tend to be brief and transient, as in Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) where a heavily pregnant and fugitive Sethe is aided by poor white Amy; or in Thulani Davis's 1959 (1992) where the brief kindness of a white woman is remembered as a significant, if fleeting gesture. I wish to raise questions about the ways in which cross-racial childhood relationships are represented formally and aesthetically. There is often an understandable but troubling literary–critical impasse whereby black girls are contained within the first-person narrations of white protagonists which, whilst explicating the connection between the girls, risk engulfing or subsuming the black “best friend.” I shall examine the ways in which this may be the inevitable result of the Bildungsroman form and consider how the representation of the cross-racial friendship at the heart of Ellen Foster is modified in direct correspondence to the novel's structuring.

A Qualitative Study of Exercise in Older African American and White Women in Rural South Carolina: Perceptions, Barriers, and Motivations

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 37-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Wilcox ◽  
Larissa Oberrecht ◽  
Melissa Bopp ◽  
Sandra K. Kammermann ◽  
Charles T. McElmurray
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
White Women ◽  
Rural South

scholarly journals Violence in the Lives of Rural, Southern, and Poor White Women

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 517-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Farber ◽  
Julie E. Miller-Cribbs
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Poor White

Contraceptive Chaos

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Green
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
Contraceptive Use ◽  
Short Term ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Remedy ◽  
Drug Risk ◽  
Poor White

Judith Weisz's story of the politics of drug risk management now turns from the national controversy over Depo-Provera to join Anne MacMurdo's story of the drug’s unapproved contraceptive use and the personal risks faced by women. The FDA’s limited authority over Upjohn's marketing practices and over physicians, mental health facilities, and family planning clinics nationwide, permitted the drug to be prescribed for contraception without the informed consent of women. Unlike Judith Weisz's story of Depo-Provera's long-term risk of cancer, Anne MacMurdo's concerns the drug's short-term side effects, such as excessive menstrual bleeding, depression, and weight gain. Her story began when an injection of the drug in 1974 was followed by a hysterectomy to stop her continuous bleeding. Shebrought a products liability suit against Upjohn, but her case was not tried until 1986, when a Florida jury awarded her $186,000, a verdict reversed on appeal by the state supreme court. Her story exposes the failure of Upjohn and physicians to manage the drug's risk, the limited access of women, often poor white women and women of color, to a legal remedy, the risk management role of courts, and the limited ability of state civil law to address the drug's short-term side effects.

A Beginning

Lovie ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Yarger
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
Farm Women ◽  
Older Woman ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Poor White ◽  
Lay Midwives ◽  
Career Advising ◽  
Pregnancy And Birth ◽  
In Pregnancy

This chapter presents a selective account of Lovie’s childhood. Lovie’s interest in pregnancy and birth takes root on the Beard family farm where lay midwives, known as grannies, granny women or granny midwives, attended the deliveries of African American tenant farm women. These traditional midwives, who were community based and served women of color as well as poor white women, learned their vocation through an informal apprenticeship with an older woman, often a relative. When Lovie graduates from high school, her mother insists that she continue her education and pursue a career, advising her that she “can’t rely on menfolks.” Following the contours of Lovie’s life, the reader begins a journey through the last century of midwifery history in the South.

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