Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South (review)

Southeastern Geographer Vol. XXXXIII, No. 2, November 2003, pp. 307-3 14 REVIEWS Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South. Lu Ann Jones, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2002. 250 pp., index, notes, photographs, and refs. $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-8078-5384-4). Helen Ruth Aspaas Mama Learned Us to Work provides insights into the productive and reproductive lives of 20th century farm women in the South. Rural women throughout the United States have been marginalized in contemporary analytical works on issues related to agriculture, rural livelihoods, rural poverty and human agency. This book helps to compensate for this omission. The book uses case studies to help the reader appreciate the lives of Southern farm women in the following contexts: women as producers and consumers, women as agents of change, and comparisons between Anglo women and African American women. Through the use of her own interviews and those resting in state and national archives, Jones brings the day-to-day lives of many farm families to life. Four principal themes form the core of this book. First we are introduced to the daily lives of Southern farm women in the first half of the 20th century. Jones reinforces women's skills at multitasking and abilities to balance their roles as reproducers as well as producers. These women could complete the daily tasks of ironing and cooking while at the same time overseeing the curing of tobacco. As labor demands shifted, the women were not adverse to helping with the strenuous tasks of field work, and many stories in the book depict cotton picking as especially demanding on the entire household. A second theme addresses farm women as agents of change. Women all sought alternative means of introducing more income into their homes. They often did so with small bits ofcapital but large doses ofdetermination. Change for many ofthese women came as a result ofthe efforts ofthe county home demonstration agents who brought ideas for improving the daily lives of the household as well as introducing income-generating options. By using their chickens, their cows and their gardens, women added value to these agricultural products, marketed them and augmented their household's income. The third theme is a comparison between African American and Anglo American women. Jones identifies specific hurdles faced by the African American farm Dr. Aspaas is Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284. E-mail: hraspaas@vcu.edu. 308REVIEWS women, and her chapter on African American home extension agents is the most inspiring one in the book. While the chapter on Anglo American home extension agents tends to focus on intra-professional issues, one clearly appreciates the African American agents' abilities to maneuver through the challenges of the Jim Crow South to bring help and encouragement to African American farm women. The sections of the book that address racial differences could have been enhanced by referencing Caroline Moser's work on women as community organizers (1987). And finally, Jones addresses Southern farm women as consumers and the challenges they faced in accruing needed capital to institute change within their homes and their productive work. With this transition to consumption, farm women narrowed the gaps that often distinguished them from their small town or urban sisters. Some questions arise during the reading of the book, and by answering them Jones could have clarified levels of specificity. How are these farm women in the rural South during the first halfofthe 20th century different from their counterparts in the Midwest, the Northeast and the West? What issues were universal to all of these women and which issues were unique to the women in the South? A good clear definition ofwhat comprises the "new South" would have helped the book get off to a more defined start. Rather than assuming that the reader really does understand the concept of the "New South," Jones could have enlightened the reader in the early chapters ofthe book. Masculine and feminine space is a theme that recurs consistently throughout the book but as a subtheme is never addressed with the rigor that would bring cohesion to...