Immigrant girl, radical woman : a memoir from the early twentieth century / Matilda Rabinowitz ; with commentary and original drawings by Robbin Legere Henderson ; afterword by Ileen A. DeVault.
The journey to America -- The wretched refuse of your teeming shores -- A new career -- Bridgeport and socialism -- I fell in love with him -- Little Falls -- A gallery of radicals -- After Little Falls -- Greenville, South Carolina : "the toughest job" -- New York, Greenwich, World War I -- A new life (vita) -- Ben returns -- Washington -- Ballardvale, Massachusetts, Greenwich Village, Cos Cob, St. Louis.
Summary:
Matilda Rabinowitz's illustrated memoir challenges assumptions about the lives of early twentieth-century women. She describes the ways in which she and her contemporaries rejected the intellectual and social restrictions imposed on women as they sought political and economic equality in the first half of the twentieth century. Rabinowitz devoted her labor and commitment to the notion that women should feel entitled to independence, equal rights, equal pay, and sexual and personal autonomy. Rabinowitz (1887-1963) immigrated to the United States from Ukraine at the age of thirteen. Radicalized by her experience in sweatshops, she became an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World from 1912 to 1917 before choosing single motherhood in 1918. "Big Bill" Haywood once wrote, ?a book could be written about Matilda,? but her memoir was intended as a private story for her grandchildren, Robbin Legere Henderson among them. Henderson?s black-and white-scratchboard drawings illustrate Rabinowitz?s life in the Pale of Settlement, the journey to America, political awakening and work as an organizer for the IWW, a turbulent romance, and her struggle to support herself and her child.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.