Bertha Books

Heart felt and analytical account of vanishing breed of cave dwellers. Book was written during late fifties and captures a unique time and culture of a treasured society.

Highly reccomended reading. Very interesting and personalized study of spanish gypsies. This book was written in the nineteen fifties. A world unknown to most people is brought to fruition by two extremely talented writers. The only wish I had was an update to this book which would fill in the timespan of the last fifty years.

I love a book that catches your interest on the first page and this one does! Bertha Sutliff writes in a manor that makes you feel as though you are living the book as it unfolds. I couldn't wait to get back to it when I had to lay it down. Not only does the story hold your interest, but the descriptive way it's written makes you feel your at home in the mountains of Arkansas back in that time period. Bravo Mrs. Sutliff! Excellent read.

I absolutely loved this book! It was easy reading and I couldn't
put it down. Ms. Sutliff makes her characters come to life.
I felt I knew them and what it was like to live in the hills of
Arkansas in the early 1900's. I would like to read more stories
about Beaver and Keziah. I hope there is a sequel.

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress mandated the desegregation of all public schools receiving Federal aid. Mississippi tried to "comply" with the law by a "Freedom of Choice" program which allowed students over a certain age and parents to designate the schools they wished to attend. While, perhaps, facially appealing, the "Freedom of Choice" program served as a means to intimidate blacks from attempting to register in what were at the time all-white schools. Those with the courage to do so faced danger to their livelihood, property, and persons. The "Freedom of Choice" program ultimately was invalidated through litigation.

Constance Curry's inspiring book "Silver Rights" (1995) tells the story of a family of black sharecroppers in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter and seven of their thirteen children (all their children then of school age). The Carter's took the "Freedom of Choice" program at its word. In 1965, the seven children enrolled in the primary and secondary schools of Drew, Mississippi, a small town with a then-deserved reputation for violence and lawlessness. Ms. Curry worked as a field representative for the American Friends Service Committee from 1965-1975. She got to know the Carter family well and was instrumental in providing the assistance necessary to get them through their difficult times.

The book includes excellent pictures of life in the Mississippi Delta, for both white and black people, in the early to mid-twentieth century. The book shows a feel for the place, for sharecropping life on the farms and for life in the dusty towns, for the blues culture of the Delta, and for its history. The book offers substantial discussion of the notorious Emmett Till case and of other lynchings and of early attempts to organize civil rights activities in the Delta. Ms. Curry eloquently evokes the spirit of the Delta at the opening of her story:

"In trying to describe the Mississippi Delta, I seem to find only superlatives -- the flattest land, the blackest dirt, the hottest summers, the nicest people, the poorest people. In defining the delta's past and even its present, I am aware of these extremes and also of its incongruities: the violence and the peacefulness, the beauty and the ugliness, the stillness and the tension. It is a place complex almost beyond comprehension." (p. xxi)

In telling her story, Ms. Curry lets her protagonists do most of the talking. The opening chapters set the stage and explain the Carter's ambitions for an education, and an end to the hardships of sharecropping, for their children. The second section of the book explores the backround of Mae Bertha Carter and her mother Luvenia's early life as the wife of a Delta sharecropper. The book discusses throughout the experiences of the Carter family as they faced violence and shootings in the early stages following their enrollment in the formerly white schools. Throughout their period in the public schools the children endured harassment, name-calling and ostracism. The Carter family was forced off the plantation and Matthew Carter lost his job. The book shows the courage and perseverance of the family and the aid offered by the AFSC and other organizations.

The book includes interviews with each of the thirteen Carter children and discussions of the family members fared after their graduation from the public schools. There are some moving scenes when Ms. Curry reestablished contact with the Carter family in 1988, thirteen years after her work with the AFSC came to an end. Mae Bertha Carter remains determined and forceful and has received honors from institutions within the State of Mississippi that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s.

This book tells an important story of the silver rights movement. It is a work of both history and memory and describes beautifully the changes wrought with time.

Silver Right is a moving and telling story of my family struggle to achieve equality in America. This book does a very good job of relating the feeling, fear and turmoil that I felt during those four long years of being the only black family at an all white school in the Mississippi Delta in the sixites. Silver Rights goes beyond the actions of people during that time. It looks at the cilvil right movement on a personal level. This book will make you laugh, and it will also make your cry

this is a quick recommendation: sister of the road predates kerouac, and box car bertha is the original beat writer. it is a wild and vivid (and true) tale of life in depression era america. all hail the power of WOMAN.

This is a key book for anyone who wants to understand where the Beats came from, for anyone who wants an unflinching inside look at the harsh labor movement of the 1930s, for anyone with an interest in the great, lost Hobo culture of America, or any student of women in America. There is a clear, unbroken line from Boxcar Bertha through Kerouac and Cassidy, and right up to Emmett Grogan and the Diggers of Haight-Ashbury. Bertha Thompson was born to a leftist, labor-organizing single mother. While living in their various homes, Bertha watched her mother openly take lover after lover. Her mother saw men as companions and amusement, not as meal tickets. The era's most important Labor organizers passed through their house, many of them on the lam. The all-female Thompson family experimented with 1930s communes and free love communities. On her own, Berhta took to the rails. She writes about life on the road for a woman, the violent labor struggles she took part in, the Hobo Colleges, the drug underground of the era. Bertha took an eyes-open, voluntary turn as a prostitute and was astonished by the power her pimp came to have in her independent life. "Sister of the Road" takes the reader on a wild, skidding ride through the strange and brutal underbelly of America in the Depression years. There is no other book even remotely like it. --

This book was given to me as a gift for our son. I have read it and must say that the story is very alive and full of all sorts of adventures! It keeps you wondering what is going to happen next to the main character named Jill. This little girl's imagination takes her into the world of her little flower gargen......I don't want to say too much, but it is a sweet little book that keeps you cheering for Jill!

A good book to read to your children or one that would be nice for a young girl to read. Being there to guide them would be so much more cozy!

I loved it. My Children loved me reading it to them. The pictures and illustrations were fantastic. The colors were so bright and cheerful. Very well written for young children.

"Wake Up, Bertha Bear! is an excellent book showing how everyone needs to work together to help people in need. Nicely done, very nice illustrations.

This is a wonderful book with a positive message. Gorgeous art work. Every child should have one in their bookshelf.

This is the only book of its kind written by an observer of the Amana Colonies during the era when the people lived under religious communism.

Mrs. Shambaugh made repeated trips to the Amanas and became a lifelong friend of the Amana people. This rare book tells of life in the Amana Colonies at the turn of the century.

The Amana people voted in 1932 to live under free enterprise, incorporating their land and businesses as the Amana Society and establishing a separate Amana Church Society. The people brought their own homes and many opened small businesses. With their traditional German family style restaurants, the Amanas today are Iowa's premier tourist attraction.

There are books that specialize and others that are extensive about the southwestern Indian cultures. This book is for the rest of us. It is a well laid out introduction of history and contemporary tribal affairs. We get coverage of arts and crafts. And it makes a perfect companion to Tony Hillerman books.
The book its self is separated into logical chapters on different subjects such as
1. Who an Where (physical Aspects of the American Indians)
2. The Pueblo Peoples (separate chapters on each)
3. The Athabascans
4. The Ute Indians
5. The Southern Paiute
6. The Rancheria Peoples
7. Arts and crafts

There are illustrations and monochrome pictures to support the text.
Also an extensive bibliography for those brave souls that really want to go into depth.

Fun read on a forgotten, but important, figure of the Revolution. Lucky to find it. Good price, as well as prompt and fair service.

This book is an inspiration. It truly motivates and encourages an individual to not only know Jesus but to become closer to Jesus.