Packinghouse Daughter, just published by the Minnesota Historical
Society Press, merges personal memoir and public history to tell a
compelling story about family loyalty, small-town life, and
working-class values in the face of a violent labor strike in 1959.
The daughter of a Wilson & Co. packinghouse worker, Cheri
Register recalls the meatpackers' strike that devastated and
divided her hometown of Albert Lea, Minnesota. The violence that
erupted when the company "replaced" its union workers with
strikebreakers tested family loyalty and community stability, and
attracted national attention when the governor of Minnesota called
in the National Guard, declared martial law, and closed the plant.
Register skillfully weaves her own memories, historical research,
and first-person interviews of participants on both sides of the
strike into a narrative that is thoughtful and impassioned about
the value of blue-collar work and the dignity of those who do it.
The more Register researched and wrote about the strike, the
more she had to admit that she could no longer divide labor issues
into the simplified terms of her youth. As part of the first
generation of her family to attend college, much less attain a
Ph.D., Register struggles to acknowledge such complexities without
dishonoring her working-class roots. Packinghouse Daughter also
testifies to the hold that childhood experience has on personal
values and notions of social class, despite the upward mobility
that is the great promise of American democracy. Register's journey
reflects the inner conflict felt by a generation that came of age
in the 1960s, propelled into the middle-class by post-war
prosperity, people like herself who feel"caught between the
blue-collar values of the communities we left behind and our new
status as the 'rich' people we used to scoff at".
Cheri Register is a freelance writer and teacher of creative
writing, living in Minneapolis. The opening chapter of Packinghouse
Daughter was cited as a "Notable Essay" in Best American Essays
1996. Other excerpts have appeared in Hungry Mind Review, the
University of Chicago Magazine, and the book, Is Academic Feminism
Dead? Her work on this memoir earned her a Jerome Travel and Study
Grant, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship Grant, and a grant
from the Minnesota Historical Society. Her other books include
Living with Chronic Illness: Days of Patience and Passion and "Are
Those Kids Yours?": American Families with Children Adopted from
Other Countries.
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