Icon of spring / Sonya Jason.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jason, Sonya, 1924- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slovak Americans--Pennsylvania--Jefferson (Allegheny County)--Biography.

Slovak Americans.

Jefferson (Allegheny County, Pa.)--Social life and customs.

Jefferson (Allegheny County, Pa.).

Jefferson (Allegheny County, Pa.)--Biography.

Jason, Sonya, 1924---Childhood and youth.

Jason, Sonya.

Genre:

Biographies

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (182 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, [1993]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A realistic but fond memoir of a girlhood lived in a coal camp, or "patch" in southwestern Pennsylvania during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Icon of Spring is also a coming-of-age story. It begins in 1932 when the narrator, the child of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant parents, is seven years old. Her father is a miner, and work is scarce as the grip of the depression tightens. The jars of canned food on the storeroom shelf are dwindling, and the family fears eviction from their small company-owned house. Icon of Spring recounts her childhood during the next seven years, as she grows to adolescence in a world that is protective within her family but shares the violence of the coal region. She is witness to accidental death in the mines, the murder of a coal and iron policeman, the muted struggle to unionize, and the itinerant beggars who appear at the back door.Yet this is far from a grim book, for we see life in the patch through the eyes of the child. Warmed by the closeness she feels toward her parents, especially her mother, and her nine brothers and sisters, she knows the joy of one sister's wedding and raucous reception, the mysterious Easter ritual of the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, the fun of attending a medicine show, and the almost incandescent hope placed in the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her life is peopled by traveling peddlers, the priest of her church, a union organizer, and the town bachelors: Big John, Peg Leg Pete, and Shorty Steve. Icon of Spring evokes life in a depression coal patch from a female perspective. A splendid memoir of childhood told with accuracy and warmth which is also rich in social history, it will appeal to general readers as well as students.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Introduction

1. In the Beginning

2. Darkness at Midday

3. And Then We Were Ten

4. Visitors from Afar

5. Where There's Smoke There's Gypsies

6. Doom and Dissent

7. Children of a Free Man

8. Lo, the Bridegroom Cometh

9. And Then They Were One

10. My Man Works for the Govinment

11. Other Authorities

12. Levity at Last

13. In the Garden, an Ending and a Beginning.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822958536

0822958538

9780822972648

0822972646

OCLC:

622392072