{"product_id":"the-girl-9780935697230","title":"The Girl","description":"\u003cp\u003eRead the revised third edition, published in 2022 by Midwest Villages \u0026amp; Voices, in conjunction with the Meridel LeSueur Family Circle. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Words should heat you, they should make you rise up out of your chair and move!\" - Meridel LeSueur\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Girl \u003c\/i\u003etransports us with resonant authenticity into the head of a young woman struggling to survive the depression of the 1930s in St. Paul, Minnesota. On a backdrop of state violence and poverty, and in a life shaped by desperation and gender-based violence, \u003ci\u003eThe Girl \u003c\/i\u003eillustrates the ways working-class women keep each other alive and seed transformational change through self-organized systems of mutual aid.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"LeSueur seems in love with the spoken word, and her consummate achievement as an artist, I believe, is her transformation of colloquial speech into musical prose. In \u003ci\u003eThe Girl\u003c\/i\u003e... common street talk turns into exquisite poetic refrains.\" -Blanche Gelfant, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMeridel LeSueur (1900-1996) is one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century, and \u003ci\u003eThe Girl \u003c\/i\u003eis her most celebrated novel. In her own words, Meridel came from \"abolitionists, agrarians, radical lawyers... dissenters and democrats and radicals through five generations.\" Meridel was blacklisted in the 1950s because powerful men knew how dangerous it was to have proletariat working-class women writing their own stories. This is one of the stories they didn't want you to read.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA new foreword by Margaret Randall-poet, translator, and social activist-and an afterword essay by one of Meridel's great-granddaughters-locate the novel in a current social and political context.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNOTE TO READER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is written in the vernacular of the era, with no quote marks.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWHAT READERS HAVE SAID\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Le Sueur seems in love with the spoken word, and her consummate achievement as an artist, I believe, is her transformation of colloquial speech into musical prose. In \u003ci\u003eThe Girl\u003c\/i\u003e...common street talk turns into exquisite poetic refrains.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e-- Blanche Gelfant, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Meridel Le Sueur's work stands, urgent and unique, at that 'bloody crossroads' where politics and culture meet...Modernist literary experimentalism engages a distinctelvly feminist conception of how people defend themselves and organze for change.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e-- Paul Lauter, A. K. and G. M. Smith Professor of Literature, Trinity College\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Midwest Villages \u0026 Voices","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51243853971730,"sku":"9780935697230","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_ef94abbb-2489-422f-8579-625ed03b9f25.jpg?v=1745873195","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-girl-9780935697230","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}