Reviews
Well written and thoroughly researched, this book draws the reader into the heart of Amish women's worlds.
How did Old Order Amish families fare during the economic crises of the 1930s? Deftly weaving new oral history and photographic evidence with an ambitious New Deal–era Works Progress Administration survey, the authors' deeply researched portrait of Amish sustainability credits women and girls' productivity in house, yard, farm, and market.
Jellison and Reschly's study exemplifies the ways that deep, multilayered community studies add nuance and accuracy to understandings of the past. Using diaries, memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper accounts to add women's voices to a quantitative study of Lancaster Amish households, they establish that women's productive and reproductive labor was the linchpin of Amish farm families' survival in the Great Depression and their ability to pass farms to subsequent generations.
Using first-person reports and federal data, Jellison and Reschly beautifully capture the work rhythms of Amish women. The successful Amish choice to reject industrialization shows that modernization and alienation were far from inevitable in American agriculture.
The Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, survived and thrived during the Great Depression. Why? Amish Women and the Great Depression answers this in ways that help readers become more astute observers of both intangible and tangible cultural heritage.
Amish Women and the Great Depression disrupts stereotypes about women's work and rural society and shows how Amish women simultaneously generated farm income and cut costs for farm families, ensuring the social sustainability of farming across generations.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Working Together: Women and Men on the Amish Family Farm
2. Quilts and Clothing: Sewing for the Amish Family
3. Kitchen and Market: Producing Food for the Family and the
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Working Together: Women and Men on the Amish Family Farm
2. Quilts and Clothing: Sewing for the Amish Family
3. Kitchen and Market: Producing Food for the Family and the Customers
4. Field and Barn: Raising Crops and Livestock
5. Friends and Frolics: Having Fun but Saving Money
6. Religion and Rituals: Preparing the Celebrations and Ceremonies
7. Accidents and Illness: Healing the Sick and Spreading the News
8. Insiders and Outsiders: Telling the Story of the Amish Farm Family
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Notes
Index