The Indispensable Reference for the Self-Sufficient Homesteader This classic reference, which has informed two generations of women, is taken from the original homesteading publication Country Women. Written from the perspective of women learning and sharing all manner of farming knowledge on a small scale, it remains an invaluable guide. Encouragement and practical information infuse the reader with a deep respect for the land and personal journal entries throughout inspire a sense of self-sufficiency rooted in the earth. Born of the "back to the land" movement, this handbook chronicles the aspirations of tireless women seeking a new life on small farms around America. Authors Jeanne Tetrault and Sherry Thomas lived this philosophy and lifestyle as they eventually networked with like-minded women to share ideas, stories, and knowledge. Country Women (not the glossy upstart Country Woman Magazine) started as a small newsletter to share information between the small farms, collectives and communes scattered about the country, eventually reaching 17,000 people by word of mouth. Readers were encouraged to contribute what they knew about gardening, raising goats, building a barn, or any other practical know-how valuable to the new farmer. These voices became the collective voice of self-sufficient women everywhere. Tetrault and Thomas painstakingly crafted this compendium of the magazine's early years more to capture the best of the information, while adding additional sections on veterinary medicine, carpentry, and more detailed animal care. This manual at once captures the spirit of a generation and conveys timeless wisdom. A must for everyone wishing to build a stronger relationship with the land and their place on it. This book is also available from Echo Point Books in hardcover (ISBN 1635619904).

In country music, the men might dominate the radio waves. But it’s women—like Maren Morris, Mickey Guyton, and Kacey Musgraves—who are making history. This is the full and unbridled story of the past twenty years of country music seen through the lens of these trailblazers’ careers—their paths to stardom and their battles against a deeply embedded boys’ club, as well as their efforts to transform the genre into a more inclusive place—as told by award-winning Nashville journalist Marissa R. Moss. For the women of country music, 1999 was an entirely different universe—a brief blip in time, when women like Shania Twain and the Chicks topped every chart and made country music a woman’s world. But the industry, which prefers its stars to be neutral, be obedient, and never rock the boat, had other plans. It wanted its women to “shut up and sing”—or else. In 2021, women are played on country radio as little as 10 percent of the time, but they’re still selling out arenas, as Kacey Musgraves does, and becoming infinitely bigger live draws than most of their male counterparts, creating massive pop crossover hits like Maren Morris’s “The Middle,” pushing the industry to confront its racial biases with Mickey Guyton’s “Black Like Me,” and winning heaps of Grammy nominations. Her Country is the story of how in the past two decades, country’s women fought back against systems designed to keep them down and created entirely new pathways to success. It’s the behind-the-scenes story of how women like Kacey, Mickey, Maren, Miranda Lambert, Rissi Palmer, Brandi Carlile, and many more have reinvented their place in an industry stacked against them. When the rules stopped working for these women, they threw them out, made their own, and took control—changing the genre forever, and for the better.

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Straight’s memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women’s stories . . . The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco Chronicle In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self–proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close–knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post–slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother–in–law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California. A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.” “Certain books give off the sense that you won’t want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight’s new memoir, In the Country of Women . . . Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb . . . Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment.” ––Los Angeles Times

From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Sparrow comes an inspiring historical novel about “America’s Joan of Arc” Annie Clements—the courageous woman who started a rebellion by leading a strike against the largest copper mining company in the world. In July 1913, twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She’s spent her whole life in the copper-mining town of Calumet, Michigan where men risk their lives for meager salaries—and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite, and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day, dreading the fateful call of the company man telling them their loved ones aren’t coming home. When Annie decides to stand up for herself, and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone believes she may have taken on more than she is prepared to handle. In Annie’s hands lie the miners’ fortunes and their health, her husband’s wrath over her growing independence, and her own reputation as she faces the threat of prison and discovers a forbidden love. On her fierce quest for justice, Annie will discover just how much she is willing to sacrifice for her own independence and the families of Calumet. From one of the most versatile writers in contemporary fiction, this novel is an authentic and moving historical portrait of the lives of the men and women of the early 20th century labor movement, and of a turbulent, violent political landscape that may feel startlingly relevant to today.

Full-tilt, hardcore, down-home, and groundbreaking, the women of country music speak volumes with every song. From Maybelle Carter to Dolly Parton, k.d. lang to Taylor Swift—these artists provided pivot points, truths, and doses of courage for women writers at every stage of their lives. Whether it’s Rosanne Cash eulogizing June Carter Cash or a seventeen-year-old Taylor Swift considering the golden glimmer of another precocious superstar, Brenda Lee, it’s the humanity beneath the music that resonates. Here are deeply personal essays from award-winning writers on femme fatales, feminists, groundbreakers, and truth tellers. Acclaimed historian Holly George Warren captures the spark of the rockabilly sensation Wanda Jackson; Entertainment Weekly’s Madison Vain considers Loretta Lynn’s girl-power anthem “The Pill”; and rocker Grace Potter embraces Linda Ronstadt’s unabashed visual and musical influence. Patty Griffin acts like a balm on a post-9/11 survivor on the run; Emmylou Harris offers a gateway through paralyzing grief; and Lucinda Williams proves that greatness is where you find it. Part history, part confessional, and part celebration of country, Americana, and bluegrass and the women who make them, Woman Walk the Line is a very personal collection of essays from some of America’s most intriguing women writers. It speaks to the ways in which artists mark our lives at different ages and in various states of grace and imperfection—and ultimately how music transforms not just the person making it, but also the listener.

One of the great works of feminist SF

After its initial publication in 1993, this book quickly became an essential book for country music scholars and fans. Now back in print, with updated material, an additional chapter, and new photos, this volume is poised to reach a whole new generation of country music fans. From country's earliest pioneers to its greatest legends, this book documents the lives of the female artists who have shaped the music for over two hundred years. Through interviews, photos, and primary texts, the authors weave a vast and complex tapestry of personalities and talent. Long overlooked and underappreciated by scholars, female country music artists have always been immensely popular with fans. This book gets to the heart of the special bond female artists have with their audiences. People seeking to understand the context out of which mega-stars such as Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and the Dixie Chicks emerged need look no farther than this book.