The Women of Copper Country by Mary Russell

I am always amazed to learn of women who changed their world.  When I read the book, The Whip, I learned of a real life woman who was the first to drive a supply wagon across the west during the Gold Rush days.  This was an amazing story of courage and strength in a world that did not encourage women to step outside of their “box.” In The Women of Copper Country,  Mary Russell enlightened me about a time and place in American history that I was totally unfamiliar with—the 20th century copper mines in the UP of Michigan and the strikes that began the labor unions that improved their lives.  Most of us are blissfully unaware of the horrific work conditions in the early 1900s done by many poor, undereducated men and women in support of the industrialization of our country.  Russell tells the story of the plight of the miners in Michigan.  The working conditions were beyond dangerous and the living conditions were clearly set by the mine owners to keep the workers in near slave conditions.  The divide between the “Have” and “have nots” was wide and the attitude of the wealthy was that those who worked for them were simply there to keep the wheels turning. The wealthy owners had little desire to help the workers to improve their living conditions or to move up in the world.  Russell tells the story of the copper strike of 1913 in Calumet led almost entirely by Annie Clements and her faithful followers.  Up against the power and money of the mine owners the strikers were doomed to be defeated and left in worse shape than when they began.  Because strikes, by their nature, are collective actions and thus require workers to leave their jobs, these workers had to be willing to risk what little they had and hope they would survive on the generosity of strangers.  Annie and her team were able to support their strikers by bringing in money from other unions around the country as well as collect money sent because of publicity from well known strikers like Mother Jones and Ella Bloor as well as the coverage from news writers like Mike Sweeney.  Annie was simply a housewife, but somehow she was able to mobilize 10,000 miners and she kept the strike going for months.  It cost her dearly, but she was eventually rewarded with the passage of the Clayton antitrust act in 1914 which came to be known as the Magna Carta of Labor.  If you liked the movie Norma Rae, you will enjoy this book.  It is inspiring and uplifting to read about those who are willing to sacrifice everything to win independence and respect for themselves and their community.

American Dirt by Jeannine Cummings

Try to imagine the feeling of dread you have when watching a horror movie.  You watch with your hands over your eyes because you know the monster is coming; you just do not know when and from which dark corner.  Jeannine Cummings managed to capture that panicky feeling on each and every page of her novel, American Dirt.  The book opens in Acapulco at a family barbecue where a sudden, brutal massacre kills 16 family members leaving one mother and son alive, hidden in the bathroom, listening to the murderers laughing and eating the chicken rather than letting it go to waste.  We learn that the murders were in retaliation for a scathing article written for the local paper by Sebastian, an investigative journalist, in which he “outs” the cartel leader and his cruel gang and the take over of Acapulco by his drug cartel. The article truthfully describes the murders of locals, the flight of people from the city and the fear felt by the citizens as a result. The twist comes when we also find that the Jesé of the cartel, Javier, has become a friend of Sebastian’s wife, Lydia, and that she convinced her husband to publish the article reassuring him that “her friend” would not harm the writer and his family because of the relationship that he and Lydia have developed in their weekly get together at her bookshop.  Lydia realizes her grave mistake too late.  Her husband, her mother and all her family except Luca, her son, are dead because Javier is a killer despite his attempts to appear cultured and well read.  Thus begins the long, perilous journey of Lydia and Luca to el Norte.  We live the pain and the desperation of the mother and son as they join other migrants trying to make it to the only place they will be able to find a new life, the United States.  Cummings’ descriptions of the unimaginable risks these people take to get on the Beast (the boxcars of the many trains moving products north) and the unspeakable hardships and tortures such a rape that the migrants face every day are heartbreaking and eventually exhausting.  By the end of the journey the characters are whittled down to existence mode.  They have given up all pretense of sophistication; they just want to survive and as a reader you feel that way too.  Just get there; just finish the journey; just make it through the day.  American Dirt has faced backlash from the Latino community who complain the author is “stealing” their story and that Cummings descriptions of places and events is not factual.  The book is eye opening and given that much of literature is written about people and places the author has never seen, it seems that awareness is a positive result.  We rarely hear the story of migrants from a migrant point of view and even if this one is what some have described as “trauma porn”, the conversations that will arise are important.  I recommend you read this book, but do not expect to be comfortable as you do.