History Makers:
Women of the American Revolution
by Mary R. Furbee, Lucent Books, 1999, 112 pages.
Reviewed by Amanda Ray, a WVU graduate student in history.
Mary Furbee, a free-lance writer who teaches
in the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at WVU, writes
an engaging account of six Revolutionary-era women: Abigail Adams,
Peggy Arnold, Esther Reed, Deborah Sampson, Mercy Otis Warren,
and Phillis Wheatley. Furbee contends that these women challenged
the societal view of women at the time, through letters debating
women's rights, spying, serving as a soldier, or writing poetry
and history. She makes a solid argument that their contributions
began to change the way society viewed women, specifically in
terms of what women could accomplish.
Furbee begins with Abigail Adams, who requests of her husband,
John Adams: "I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and
be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do
not put such unlimited power into the hands of Husbands. Remember
all Men would be Tyrants if they could." Though unable to
sway her husband's opinion in favor of extending rights to women,
Abigail Adams's words lived on and did inspire later women to
take up the discussion of women's rights.
Peggy Arnold, the wife of Benedict Arnold, served as a British spy during the Revolutionary War. Esther Reed organized the first women's relief organization in the American colonies during the Revolution. With Deborah Sampson, Furbee provides an example of a woman who fought in the Revolutionary War as a soldier. Sampson, who dressed as a man, was wounded twice in battle before she was discovered.
A friend of Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren had been allowed to pursue a formal education, and it served her well. She is best remembered for writing a three-volume history of the American Revolution entitled The History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, Interspersed with Biographical and Moral Observations (1805). Warren holds the distinction of being the first American woman to write a history book.
The only African American represented in this book, Phillis Wheatley, a slave for most of her life, published a book of poetry in 1773. Furbee states that it was Wheatley's life, more than her words, that left such a profound legacy: "That a female slave could write such poetry seriously weakened arguments that blacks and women were intellectually inferior."
These six women represent all those early women who made contributions to the development of this country. The women chosen for this book all had left some record of their lives, whether it was the Adams family letters, Warren and Wheatley's own works, or the government documentation of Sampson as a woman who received an army pension for her services. This allows Furbee to provide readers with a good background for all of these women and a convincing argument for their importance.
The Coalwood
Way
by Homer Hickam, Delacorte, 2000, 318 pages.
Reviewed by Matt Carter, a WVU graduate student in English.
When I was a child, my parents, my brother,
and I navigated a series of winding roads that led seemingly
down, down, and further down into the coal fields of McDowell
County, West Virginia. Bi-weekly, we went to visit my great-
grandparents and the many aunts, uncles, and cousins who worked
in or directly benefited from the production of coal.
Once part of a thriving geographic region, the towns of Welch,
Kimball, Keystone, and Northfork had, even in the 1970s, begun
to show signs of economic decay. But despite this, the people
there clung together. Despite its exterior of dirtiness—the
trash and sludge lining the sides of the Tug River, the coal
dust on windowpanes, and the smoky sky against slag heaps—there
remained something beautiful about this region. After reading
Homer Hickam's The Coalwood Way, I realize just what that was.
In his first book, Rocket Boys,
Hickam introduced us to the community of Coalwood, West Virginia.
The film version, October Sky, further built on the experiences
of the community and the "Big Creek Missile Agency."
Now, in The Coalwood Way , we relive the year 1959 through
the eyes of Homer "Sonny" Hickam, a young man with
almost impossible dreams. The book is a series of stories interwoven
in memoir: the conflict between a boy and his will to be more
than "the second son" to his father; the desire of
a mother to escape her community to find a better life for herself
and her family; the will of an estranged girl to fit in against
all odds; and the struggle to realize one's place in the world.
The author's superb use of metaphor paves the way for us to become
part of Sonny's existence and his awakening to the wider world
around him: "It was not in the nature of the people of Coalwood
to look up at the sky. For most of the years while I was growing
up, a drifting cloud of coal dust and grit from the mine hung
in the air, obscuring what sky there was squeezed between our
mountains. But when the railroad tracks were taken out in the
spring of 1959, and the tipple operations moved across the mountain
to Caretta, the dust cleared. For the first time I could clearly
see the velvety blackness of space. I found the stars bright
as fireflies and the moon like a giant glowing wheel, and I was
fascinated."
Like few other authors, Hickam captures the essence of the Appalachian
coal fields. But perhaps more than anything else, what Homer
Hickam is able to do with this book is to explore the sense of
place and how this sense of place shapes us, not just at the
time we first experience it, but throughout our lives.
This book is a delightful read. It is not a retelling of Rocket
Boys, but provides us with background which brings that book
into better perspective. The major criticism of Hickam in the
past has surrounded plots that seem to work a little too well.
I must admit that the same could be said of this book. But I
have always been taught that making the plot work is the mark
of a good storyteller. I strongly recommend this book from one
of West Virginia's brightest sons.