”Making a living by the sweat of her brow”: Hazel dickens and a life of work

Informed by archival interviews, writings, correspondence, and performances by Hazel Dickens, and inspired by Jessica Wilkerson’s 2019 NPR article “A Lifetime Of Labor: Maybelle Carter At Work,” West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard considers musician Hazel Dickens’s experiences as a woman engaged in a lifetime of both wage work and care work. This lived experience, as well as Hazel’s approach to music as work, was the foundation which directly informed her identity formation, inspired her songwriting, and fueled her advocacy for working people across the globe.

Read on via Smithsonian Folklife

The Food We Eat, The Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables

Hilliard’s chapter “‘The Reason We Make These Deep Fat-Fried Treats:’ In Conversation with the Rosettes of Helvetia, West Virginia,” is included in the new collection, The Food We Eat, The Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables, edited by Elizabeth Engelhardt and Lora Smith and published by Ohio University Press.

Related Events:

Keynote with Courtney Balestier, Emily Hilliard, and Lora Smith at Hindman Settlement School’s Dumplin’s and Dancin’, Hindman, KY, November 2, 2019

Reading and Dinner at Holly Hill Inn with Elizabeth Engelhardt, Robert Gipe, Emily Hilliard, and Lora Smith, Midway, KY, November 15, 2019

Reading at Taylor Books with Courtney Balestier, Emily Hilliard, and Lora Smith , Charleston, WV, December 5, 2019

Related Media:

Elizabeth Engelhardt and Emily Hilliard on WEKU’s Eastern Standard

Order a copy via Ohio University Press

Conditions for All of Us: Emily Hilliard in Conversation with Emily Comer

“On February 22, 2018, West Virginia public school teachers and school service employees, most of them women, walked out of their classrooms in what would become a nine-day statewide strike, fighting for a 5% raise and affordable healthcare coverage. But what the teachers’ statements, speeches, and protest signs indicated was that this was not just a protest for personal compensation, but a struggle for better social conditions for the future of their communities.“

Read on via Southern Cultures

Building a Broom By Feel: Jim Shaffer →

"Jim Shaffer’s shop is dusty and smells like a horse stable—a comforting olfactory association that I suddenly realize has less to do with horses than with the rolled and bundled straw I see stacked high along the walls. Though the pole barn that houses Shaffer’s Charleston Broom and Mop Company is just a few miles from the capital city of Charleston, West Virginia, the unincorporated area where it sits along Davis Creek in Loudendale is a wooded, quiet, and close-knit community. Everyone who lives here knows Jim, and many people across the state know him too. At 87, Shaffer has been making brooms for seventy years and is the last handmade commercial broom maker in West Virginia."

Read on in Southern Cultures

Meet One of the Last Remaining Broom Makers in Appalachia →

Along Davis Creek, in Loudendale, WV, outside of Charleston, there’s a long green building on the side of the road with the words “Charleston Broom and Mop Co.” painted on the side. That building is the workshop of James Shaffer, who at age 87, is the last hand-made commercial broom maker in the state. He first learned the trade in 1946, meaning he’s been making brooms for 70 years.

Read on via West Virginia Public Broadcasting