Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman - by Matilda Rabinowitz (Paperback)

About the Book

Matilda Rabinowitz's illustrated memoir challenges assumptions about the lives of early twentieth-century women. In Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman, Rabinowitz describes the ways in which she and her contemporaries rejected the intellectual and social restrictions imposed on women as they sought political and economic equality in the first half...

Book Synopsis

Matilda Rabinowitz's illustrated memoir challenges assumptions about the lives of early twentieth-century women. In Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman, Rabinowitz describes the ways in which she and her contemporaries rejected the intellectual and social restrictions imposed on women as they sought political and economic equality in the first half of the twentieth century. Rabinowitz devoted her labor and commitment to the notion that women should feel entitled to independence, equal rights, equal pay, and sexual and personal autonomy.

Rabinowitz (1887-1963) immigrated to the United States from Ukraine at the age of thirteen. Radicalized by her experience in sweatshops, she became an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World from 1912 to 1917 before choosing single motherhood in 1918. "Big Bill" Haywood once wrote, "a book could be written about Matilda," but her memoir was intended as a private story for her grandchildren, Robbin Légère Henderson among them. Henderson's black-and white-scratchboard drawings illustrate Rabinowitz's life in the Pale of Settlement, the journey to America, political awakening and work as an organizer for the IWW, a turbulent romance, and her struggle to support herself and her child.

Review Quotes

A fascinating interplay between past and present and help us to read between the lines of Matilda's words...Robbins' memoir is recommended to anyone interested in labour organization and women workers in the early years of the 20th century. The ease of reading, illustrations, and Henderson's additions make it an ideal book for assigning to undergraduates

-- "Labour/Le Travail"

A fascinating, educational and engaging personal story written like a great novel rather than a typical memoir.... Matilda's story strengthens the resolve of women to find their own place in society in their own time and be inspired. I will recommend Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman to my college students as a must read.

-- "Israel National News"

Offers a sustained focus on labor in the early twentieth century, including factory conditions for women and men, intra-union dynamics, and the challenges facing working mothers.... Scholars will find much to love in this engaging, touching, and timely memoir that may not have been written for this wider audience but, happily, has found us.

-- "Legacy 35.2"

About the Author

Matilda Rabinowitz wrote a regular column, "On the Left," for the Socialist Newsletter, a Los Angeles publication of the Socialist Party. Robbin Légère Henderson is an artist and a freelance curator and exhibition consultant. Ileen deVault is Professor of Labor History at Cornell University's ILR School. She is the author of United Apart, also from Cornell.