With These Hands

Book excerpt: Beginning with Native American women, this volume traces the history of farm women of all races in the United States. The complex working lives of rural women -- European immigrants, black slaves and then farmers, Hispanic women in the new border states -- emerge through letters, songs, fiction, official documents, journal entries, poetry, and oral history. The texts testify to women's love of the land, to their consciousness of racism and sexism, and to their energies for social change.