These Are Our Lives

by Work Projects Administration, William Terry Couch

The life histories of laborers in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia during the Depression center on family life, customs, and institutions

Genres: History

421 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

Reviews

[Corin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad look at the time and place. Very honest, like it or not.

[Grandma Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those not familiar--the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It was created to provide employment for historians, teachers, writers, librarians, and other white-collar workers. It resulted in state guides, city guides, oral histories, local histories, etc. Many of these books are still available in libraries and history centers and in some cases have been reprinted and are still available to purchase. This book is the result of interviews in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Real people, real stories, real hardships, real look at the life and times of the Great Depression. Much of the language is in the dialect of the area and its people so sometimes hard to decipher. Their lives are part depressing, part hopeful, mainly struggle--in the end I admired every person for their perseverance.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an interesting look into the lives of families living in the American south at the end of the great depression. The authors and stories selected were picked in an attempt to show life as it really is for most Americans, the good, the bad and the ugly. And there is plenty of each to be found in this book.
Some stories depict a level of poverty that is shocking, others portray the deep and disturbingly open racism and sexism present in the united states at this time, more show a corrupt system of work that does more harm than good. However it isn't all negative. There are hopeful stories and ones that depict a life well spent. Many show that wealth and prestidge are not necessary for a prosperous life. Still, the picture painted is largely disheartening and stunningly relevant to current issues that plague us.
This book serves as a reminder that we have come a long way but also that we need to be careful because we are not so far as to be able to stop trying to improve.

[David Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a bit of a tough read. It's a collection of 35 stories about the people in North Carolina and some of the surrounding states. They tried to get stories from as diverse a group of folks as possible. Many of the stories are of crushing poverty, crooked landlords, and mean bosses. I've read quite a bit about man's inhumanity to man, so I was a bit surprised by my reaction to many of these little tales.

It's also a bit of a hard read because of the way it was written. It's generally the subjects' own words, and it's written to convey the manner of their speech - "Dat was de fust time I ever 'membered hatin' de Yankees" and "Pa believed in big famblies an' farm work. He wanted all his chillun to have a fair eddication"

In these days of modern conveniences, it's easy to forget that, technologically speaking, 1939 (the year this was published) is a lot closer to 1626 than it is to 2026. It was also a time before many legal protections we take for granted. It's hard for me to read these stories of 20 years before my birth and place them in the America I grew up in.