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Say “labor” and “Akron” and the likely response will be “rubber.” That’s as it should be, but in “Labor in Akron, 1825-1945” the historian John Tully reaches back far earlier, even as far back as the founding of the city.
The laborers who dug the Ohio & Erie Canal, mostly Irish immigrants seeking opportunity after a famine and cholera epidemic, were paid a pittance and vulnerable to rattlesnakes and diseases like malaria. There were a few unorganized strikes, but conditions did not improve.
Other early labor activities included the forming of a carpenters’ union in 1837 and a factory workers’ strike in 1845. Akron was important in women’s rights, with early suffrage efforts and the momentous 1851 “Ain’t I A Woman” speech by Sojourner Truth.
Nima doesn’t feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to belong somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn’t. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn’t give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry. And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else’s… she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.
Image: Tordotcom
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The adventures of the Shadowhunters circa Edwardian London continue, as Cordelia must face the fact that her arranged marriage is a sham, her magical blade burns her whenever she tries to use it, and a serial killer is targeting her friends. (March 2)