Pickers come from near and far, year after year, for the berry-picking season, and from a variety of backgrounds. In the 20th century, for local people, both adults and children, it was an opportunity to supplement the family income; Glasgow folk combined it with a holiday. For the Scottish Traveller community it was an annual opportunity to meet up with friends and family, and forge new relationships. Roger Leitch encouraged many of those berry pickers to share their (mostly happy) recollections for this book - which is published at a time of political change with challenges for the soft fruit cultivation business. He also interviewed workers in other seasonal employments: potato picking; working with crops: hay/bracken/reed/flax cutting and sugar-beet lifting; fencing; repairing drystone dykes; being a deer ghillie or a river ghillie or water bailiff; salmon fishing.

Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in 1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls, and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas, and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.

Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in 1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls, and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas, and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.

This book explores the transition from oral to written history now taking place in tribal Jordan, a transition that reveals the many ways in which modernity, literate historicity, and national identity are developing in the contemporary Middle East. As traditional Bedouin storytellers and literate historians lead him through a world of hidden documents, contested photographs, and meticulously reconstructed pedigrees, Andrew Shryock describes how he becomes enmeshed in historical debates, ranging from the local to the national level. The world the Bedouin inhabit is rich in oral tradition and historical argument, in subtle reflections on the nature of truth and its relationship to poetics, textuality, and power. Skillfully blending anthropology and history, Shryock discusses the substance of tribal history through the eyes of its creators - those who sustain an older tradition of authoritative oral history and those who have experimented with the first written accounts. His focus throughout is on the development of a 'genealogical nationalism' as well as on the tensions that arise between tribe and state. Rich in both personal revelation and cultural implications, this book poses a provocative challenge to traditional assumptions about the way history is written.

This is an oral history of a second-generation, urban-born woman who struggles to survive in the poor, Andean city of La Paz. It shows how her identity shifts over time, shaped by the major events in her life. Topics range fron social networks to magical interventions and clairvoyant dreaming.

Once the Maroons escaped from slavery and established their communities in the remote interior of Suriname, attention shifted from military threat to internal danger. As they faced these dangers in an unknown rainforest, they sought refuge in prophetic movements directed by charismatic religious leaders. This book charts the history of Okanisi religious movements from their escape to the present day. It is based on sixty years of fieldwork by the late Bonno Thoden van Velzen and Ineke van Wetering, archival research and oral histories. Prophets of Doom is a tribute to Okanisi society and reflects decades of research and dedication.

Contesting home defence is a new history of the Home Guard, a novel national defence force of the Second World War composed of civilians who served as part-time soldiers: it questions accounts of the force and the war, which have seen them as symbols of national unity. It scrutinises the Home Guard's reputation and explores whether this 'people's army' was a site of social cohesion or of dissension by assessing the competing claims made for it at the time. It then examines the way it was represented during the war and has been since, notably in Dad's Army, and discusses the memories of men and women who served in it. The book makes a significant and original contribution to debates concerning the British home front and introduces fresh ways of understanding the Second World War. -- .

Women were at the forefront of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, with the Arab Spring protests providing an unprecedented opportunity to make their voices heard. But these women also faced an intense backlash from Egypt's patriarchal authorities, with female activists subjected to sexual violence and intimidation by the regime and even fellow protestors. Centered on the testimonies of four women who each played a significant role in the protests, this book provides unique insight into women's experiences during the Egyptian Revolution, and into the methods of resistance these women developed in response to sexual violence. In the process, Hamzeh casts new light on the relationship between gendered and state violence, and argues that women's resistance to this violence is reshaping gender relations in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

This book discusses hagiographical sources from Morocco taking in consideration the often-overlooked oral tradition. Orality, as is shown in this study, completes and enriches the vision of hagiography that written sources traditionally has offered. The most relevant example in this book is the high presence of female saints in oral narratives that were not included in any other written sources. Recovering oral tradition to study hagiography as well as the role of female saints in Morocco has been one of the main areas of focus in this study as well as problematizing the dependence and dialogue between written and oral culture and can help to understand the diffusion and presence of similar phenomena in other areas of Morocco.

While the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in the nineteenth century, slave raiding and dealing and the extensive use of slave labor continued into the twentieth century in many parts of Africa. Using primary oral sources such as songs, proverbs, names, and everyday sayings as a basis for critical reflection, the overriding aim of this book is to shift emphasis from conventional historical methodology by exploring previously neglected oral sources. Bringing such sources into the academic conversation proffers new insights relating to victims' responses and adjustments to slave raiding and trafficking in the late nineteenth century northern Ghana.

In Emigre Voices Lewkowicz and Grenville present twelve oral history interviews with men and women who came to Britain as Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the late 1930s. Many of the interviewees rose to great prominence in their chosen career, such as the author and illustrator Judith Kerr, the actor Andrew Sachs, the photographer and cameraman Wolf Suschitzky, the violinist Norbert Brainin, and the publisher Elly Miller. The narratives of the interviewees tell of their common struggles as child or young adult refugees who had to forge new lives in a foreign country and they illuminate how each interviewee dealt with the challenges of forced emigration and the Holocaust. The voices of the twelve interviewees provide the reader with a unique and original source, which gives direct access to the lived multifaceted experience of the interviewees and their contributions to British culture.

An innovative and accessible overview of how ancient Scandinavians understood and made use of their mythological stories. Old Norse Mythology provides a unique survey of the mythology of Scandinavia: the gods THorr (Thor) with his hammer, the wily and duplicitous Odinn (Odin), the sly Loki, and other fascinating figures. They create the world, battle their enemies, and die at the end of the world, which arises anew with a new generation of gods. These stories were the mythology of the Vikings, but they were not written down until long after the conversion to Christianity, mostly in Iceland. In addition to a broad overview of Nordic myths, the book presents a case study of one myth, which tells of how THorr (Thor) fished up the World Serpent, analyzing the myth as a sacred text of the Vikings. Old Norse Mythology also explores the debt we owe to medieval intellectuals, who were able to incorporate the old myths into new paradigms that helped the myths to survive when they were no longer part of a religious system. This superb introduction traces the use of the mythology in ideological contexts, from the Viking Age until the twenty-first century, as well as in entertainment.

If you wish to retain your image of an 'Angel' as depicted on our Christmas cards, then to read this work may be ill-advised. However, if you would like to learn of their Real Activities, and astounding interactions with the Patriarchs, taken straight from the Old Testament, then this is the book for you. But be prepared for a shock. Gone are the heroes, the innocence and certainty the Wings (which were never there in the first place). You will learn of their ruthless activities, deciding who will live or die, the slaughter of humans in great numbers by flood, in the days of Noah and what sound like nuclear bombs when destroying the cities of the plain, i.e., Sodom and Gomorrah. Before Exodus, a 'destroying Angel' moved over the houses, murdering new born Egyptian children. After Exodus and before a battle, they instructed the army of Moses Let not a creature that breathes to live. They inseminated even barren women to produce a wonder child to do their bidding. They treated humankind as if their property. Their forebears came to earth from elsewhere, descended from our skies and decided, Let us make men in our image. They were extra-terrestrial by any definition. To the patriarchs, any creature that could descend from and ascend to the sky could only be coming from and returning to heaven in a Biblical interpretation. Today, they keep their distance in the knowledge that modern humans would not fall on their faces in awe, yet they remain in earth space because they have inherited a responsibility for humankind. An explanation for their continual abductions exists herein, which may not bode well for humankind. We are their 'Property.'