When Copply Robinson leaves the oppressive Jim Crow South in the 1940s, she finds herself working in the hot fields of Safford, Arizona, picking cotton with other migrants and with her frustrated, philandering husband. Although she forms close friendships with some of the pickers, her life feels thwarted and bleak. But, Copply knows things are not as hopeless as they seem because she has a plan. One morning, while her husband is sleeping off a drunken binge, she packs up her two small children, grabs a wad of twenty dollar bills she has saved, and drives their car west to Tucson. Life there gets better for her; then it gets worse—forcing her to flee once again. Picking in High Cotton is the true story of author Shirley Robinson Sprinkles's mother, whose courageous fight to thrive motivates her to never accept poverty and destructive social norms. She is determined to change her destiny and that of her family at every opportunity. Hers is both a timely and a timeless story. Part one of this book has been adapted to a screenplay titled, High Cotton.

The New York Times best selling true story of an unlikely friendship forged between a woman and the man she incorrectly identified as her rapist and sent to prison for 11 years. Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken-- but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released, after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed. Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face-- and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives. With Picking Cotton, Jennifer and Ronald tell in their own words the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness.

High Cotton is an extraordinarily rich account of the dreams and inner turmoils of a new generation of the black upper middle class, capturing the essence of a part of American society that has mostly been ignored in literature. The novel's protagonist journeys from his childhood home in the midwest to college, a stint in New York publishing, and Europe, yet the issue of his "blackness" remains at the heart of his being.

Cassidy presents a history of the Irish influence on American slang in a colourful romp through the slums, the gangs of New York and the elaborate scams of grifters and con men, their secret language owing much to the Irish Gaelic imported with many thousands of immigrants. With chapters on How the Irish Invented Poker and How the Irish Invented Jazz, Cassidy stakes a claim for the Irishness of American English. Includes a preface by Peter Quinn and an Irish - American Vernacular Dictionary.

In The Second Great Emancipation, Donald Holley uses statistical and narrative analysis to demonstrate that farm mechanization occurred in the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi after the region’s population of farm laborers moved away for new opportunities. Rather than pushing labor off the land, Holley argues, the mechanical cotton picker enabled the continuation of cotton cultivation in the post-plantation era, opening the door for the civil rights movement, while ushering a period of prosperity into the South.

A young black girl relates the daily events of her family's migrant life in the cotton fields of central California.

A collection of stories about the life of a migrant family.