Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
In Bunting v. Oregon (1917), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 10-hour work day for men and women and required businesses to pay time-and-a-half for overtime up to three hours a day. It granted states the right to let workers and their employers implement a wage scheme agreeable to both. However, minimum wage laws were not changed until 20 years later. Read more about labor conditions and labor laws over the last century in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS https://www.asewovenwords.com/novels/).
In November 1909, 23-year-old labor activist Clara Lemlich Shavelson led a strike of 20,000 women to protest the working conditions in New York City’s garment industry. Male union leaders had cautioned against the strike, but in February 2010 the “Uprising of the 20,000” got factory owners to agree to a 52-hour work week and recognition of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), which subsequently achieved better safety regulations and higher wages. One holdout was the Triangle Waist Company, where just a year later, in 1911, a fire killed 146 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Read more about the Triangle Waist Company fire and immigration in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS). Learn more about this labor pioneer in BEHIND THE STORY.
Great audience turnout and lively Q & A for the Tazia and Gemma book reading and signing at Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor on July 31. I read narrative passages from the first Tazia section and my daughter Rebecca joined me to read the mother-daughter interview from the first Gemma section. I encourage city residents and visitors alike to visit this premier downtown independent bookstore. Thanks to Literati for hosting and to all who attended the Tazia and Gemma event. For a complete list of my publication events see NEWS; to read more about my books see NOVELS.
I’m delighted to announce that my offbeat short story “Youngest Ever” was accepted by Koan Literary Magazine, an online journal of The Paragon Press, which “occupies the space between the real and the imagined.” Here’s the log line: “Youngest Ever” reports the panel’s decisions about submissions to the Guinness Book of World Records in the category YOUNGEST, ranging from the humorous to the questionable to the horrific. I’ll share the link here and under NEWS when the story goes online. Read more about this story and others in SHORT STORIES.
My Amazon and Goodreads review of Let the Great World Spin (Rating 5): Vibrates Like a Tightrope. Like a tight rope stretched across 30 years, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin vibrates with each air current, then settles down only to be disturbed again. Each life is rendered as individually as a sky walker silhouetted against the heavens, yet each is connected to another like the ends of the rope. In a series of twosomes — a man and his brother, a mother and her daughter, young lovers, old friends — McCann finds riches in poverty, salvages gains from unspeakable losses, and uncovers grace in disaster. A book that will both bury readers in grief and buoy them with hope.
The city of was Topeka incorporated in 1857, benefitting at first from the Oregon Trail, which crossed the Kansas River there, and later from the railroads when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad system was established in 1878. After a decade of conflict between abolitionist and pro-slavery forces, the Kansas territory was admitted to the Union in 1861 as the 34th state with Topeka as its capital. Read more Topeka and Kansas history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
I’m doing a Tazia and Gemma book reading and signing at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday, July 31, at 7 PM, 124 E. Washington Street, Ann Arbor. See the Facebook event page https://www.literatibookstore.com/event/fiction-literati-ann-s-epstein-0. Learn more about the book at http://www.vineleavespress.com/tazia-and-gemma-by-ann-s-epstein.html and see the trailer on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lijLhwR2Yb0. Hope to see you and your friends on July 31! For a complete list of my publication events see NEWS; to read more about my books see NOVELS.
The first successful school desegregation court order happened 23 years before Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. On January 5, 1931 in San Diego, California, Lemon Grove Grammar School principal Jerome Green, acting under instructions from school trustees, turned away Mexican children. In the resulting lawsuit (Roberto Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District), the Superior Court of San Diego County ruled that building a separate school for the children of 50 Mexican families (said to be “backward and deficient” and in need of special Americanization education) violated CA laws because ethnic Mexicans were considered white under the state’s Education Code (which did allow segregating Oriental, Negro, and Indian children). Read more about this 1931 San Diego case as well as the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Topeka ruling in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
In the last century, San Diego’s Italian immigrant population was small compared to other cities, but the “Italian Colony” (often called “Little Italy” elsewhere) was tight-knit and insular. Many became fisherman, especially hauling in tuna, although their livelihood was threatened when the U.S. imported tuna from other locations, such as Japan, and canned it for domestic consumption. Read more about poor labor conditions in the tuna industry in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
Marshall Field & Company, a Chicago landmark built 1891-1892, boasted lavish restaurants. The Narcissus Tea Room for women was named for a bronze statue atop a huge center fountain. Chicken croquettes cost 45¢. The Men’s Grill, where no women were allowed, featured heavy walnut furniture and table-cloth free tables. Read more Chicago history in Tazia and Gemma (see (NOVELS).
