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A Stranger in the House
(Macmillan Publishing: NY, 1978)
Civil rights workers from the North were often taunted by southerners
who said, “Go back to where you came from! You’ve got your own race problems up there!” Their charge was true enough—and for my second book I decided to explore a problematic racial issue that was close to my own life: black domestic workers toiling in the homes of white families.
Once again, I used the techniques of oral history to allow my subjects to tell their own stories. I made it a point to stand back and trust the working women I interviewed, but a considerable amount of editorial work and creative thinking were necessary to transform their spoken narratives to readable form. I was particularly pleased that Linda Kerber and Jane DeHart Mathews chose to include an excerpt from
A Stranger in the House in their groundbreaking anthology for Oxford U.P.,
Women’s America:
Refocusing the Past (1982). Narratives by Roena Bethune and Rose Marie Hairston, two of the women in my book, stand side by side with the words of Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Betty Friedan and others. Furthermore, The Narratives Performing Company, a feminist theater group based in New York, produced
I Think I Should Rest Awhile, an adaptation of my book that was performed at colleges, community centers, and women’s conferences across America.
A Stranger in the House was featured on the “Oprah Winfrey Show”—where Oprah interviewed Caroline Reed, the most outspoken of my book’s subjects. People had told me that having my book appear on "Oprah" would sell thousands upon thousands of copies, but Caroline was a tough cookie and she snapped back at just about everything Oprah said. It made for lively television, but let's just say that
A Stranger in the House never became a bestseller.
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