Why we left : untold stories and songs of America's first immigrants
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Why we left : untold stories and songs of America's first immigrants
University of Minnesota Press, c2013
- : hc : alk. paper
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-207) and index
Contents of Works
- Introduction : brave men run
- No land of opportunity : folk ballads and the story of why we left
- Murder the brother who killed the tree : fratricide and the story of deforestation
- Sisters and a beaver hat : desire and the story of colonial commodity culture
- To sink it in the lonesome sea : betrayal and the story of indentured servitude
- Seduction of the house carpenter's wife: abandonment and the story of colonial
- Migration
- Epilogue : ballad of the laboring poor
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Joanna Brooks's ancestors were among the earliest waves of emigrants to leave England for North America. They lived hardscrabble lives for generations, eking out subsistence in one place after another as they moved forever westward in search of a new life. Why, Brooks wondered, did her people and countless other poor English subjects abandon their homeland to settle for such unremitting hardship? The question leads her on a journey into a largely obscured dimension of American history.
With her family's background as a point of departure, Brooks brings to light the harsh realities behind seventeenth- and eighteenth-century working-class English emigration-and dismantles the long-cherished idea that these immigrants were drawn to America as a land of opportunity. American folk ballads provide a wealth of clues to the catastrophic contexts that propelled early English emigration to the Americas. Brooks follows these songs back across the Atlantic to find histories of economic displacement, environmental destruction, and social betrayal at the heart of the early Anglo-American migrant experience. The folk ballad "Edward," for instance, reveals the role of deforestation in the dislocation and emigration of early Anglo-American peasant immigrants. "Two Sisters" discloses the profound social destabilization unleashed by the advent of luxury goods in England. "The Golden Vanity" shows how common men and women viewed their own disposable position in England's imperial project. And "The House Carpenter's Wife" offers insights into the impact of economic instability and the colonial enterprise on women.
From these ballads, tragic and heartrending, Brooks uncovers an archaeology of the worldviews of America's earliest immigrants, presenting a new and haunting historical perspective on the ancestors we thought we knew.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Brave Men Run
1. No Land of Opportunity: Folk Ballads and the Story of Why We Left
2. Murder the Brother Who Killed the Tree: Fratricide and the Story of Deforestation
3. Two Sisters and a Beaver Hat: Desire and the Story of Colonial Commodity Culture
4. To Sink It in the Lonesome Sea: Betrayal and the Story of Indentured Servitude
5. Seduction of the House Carpenter's Wife: Abandonment and the Story of Colonial
Migration
Epilogue: Ballad of the Laboring Poor
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"