Boomer : Railroad Memoirs / Linda Grant Niemann ; introduction by Leslie Marmon Silko.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Niemann, Linda.

Series:

Railroads past and present.

Railroads past and present

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women railroad employees--United States--Biography.

Women railroad employees.

Niemann, Linda.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 pages)

Edition:

Indiana University Press paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"A fascinating mix of fact, history, self-confession, self-accusation, and self-forgiveness-a diary of both emotional relationships and travel." - Pasatiempo This classic account of self-discovery and railroad life describes Linda Grant Niemann's travels as an itinerant brakeman on the Southern Pacific. Boomer combines travelogue, Wild West adventure, sexual memoir, and closely observed ethnography. A Berkeley Ph.D., Niemann turned her back on academia and set out to master the craft of railroad brakeman, beginning a journey of sexual and subcultural exploration and traveling down a path toward recovery from alcoholism. In honest, clean prose, Niemann treks off the beaten path and into the forgotten places along the rail lines, finding true American characters with colorful pasts-and her true self as well. "Ma[kes] the railroad experience come alive with all its grit, danger, romance, and general outrageousness... Possibly the finest book I've ever read about the actual experience of working on the railroad." -Trains Magazine "Niemann has a taut, lyrically restrained but vividly descriptive style, with an observational vigilance befitting a brakeman's mindset, and her narrative clips along like a boxcar rolling through the yard." - Bloom Magazine "A remarkable adventure tale, the occupational odyssey of the Ph.D. in literature who immerses herself in blue-collar America." - Library Journal

Notes:

Originally published: Berkeley : University of California Press, 1990.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780253001351

0253001358

OCLC:

967550859