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SOHP
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New Edition of Like a Family Published by UNC Press (2000)
Like a Family
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UNC Press' August 2000 reissue of Like a Family:
The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, encourages a new generation
of readers to experience and enjoy what has become a landmark text in
social history, labor history, and the history of the American South.
When originally published in 1987, critics hailed Like a Family
as "an instant classic," "a moving exploration of the transformation
from rural farm to mill village," and "social history at its best." The
new edition, which includes an updated afterward by the authors, explores
Southern textile mills from their beginnings to the 1930s, drawing largely
on the perspectives of mill workers themselves. The authors - Jacquelyn
Dowd Hall, James Leloudis, Robert Korstad, Mary Murphy, Lu Ann Jones,
and Christopher Daly - relied on hundreds of interviews with working-class
Southerners conducted by the Southern Oral History Program as part of
its Piedmont Industrialization project of the late 1970s and early 1980s
as well as letters and articles from the trade press to craft a richly
detailed narrative of cotton mill life, work, and protest. The resulting
text seamlessly blends the voices of workers with the analyses of the
authors to create what oral historian Studs Terkel has called "a living,
revelatory chronicle of life rarely observed by the academe. A powerhouse."
Like a Family has received numerous honors and awards, including
the 1988 Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association,
the 1988 Philip Taft Labor History Award, the 1988 Merle Curti History
Award in American Social History (co-winner), and an Honorable Mention
Award for the 1988 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize from the American
Studies Association. Want to learn more?
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