Beyond Norma Rae

Aimee Loiselle is assistant professor of history at Central Connecticut State University.

For more information about Aimee Loiselle, visit the Author Page.

"A deft analysis of the ways in which race, gender, and immigration status determine how media has portrayed the labor movement. Recommended for readers interested in labor history and popular media."—Library Journal

“A compelling history of the intersection of colonialism, sexism, and capitalism. . . . [A] great addition to the scholarship on not only labor, but also gender, media, and film studies.”—Society for US Intellectual History

“Well-written and extensively researched . . . [across] labor history, history of capitalism, and related fields. . . . [U]ltimately this is a work of cultural history, and a very good one at that.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“A compelling analysis of the capitalist forces that led to [Norma Rae’s] failure to include the sixteen-year fight by Black and white southern workers to get a union contract at J. P. Stevens. . . . An adept analysis of the reproduction and adaptations of the Norma Rae icon from the 1980s through 2020.”—Journal of Southern History

"Hollywood stands exposed as just another industry in Aimee Loiselle's fascinating history of how a long-fought union drive turned into the lone heroine Norma Rae. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, exploring neoliberalism as both affect and structure, accounting for shifts in the global political economy, and recovering the experiences of Puerto Rican needleworkers along with southern millhands, this tour de force redefines who is the American working class. Cultural history will never be the same!"—Eileen Boris, author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919–2019

"Weaving together histories of capitalism, labor, and cultural production, Loiselle takes readers on a wide-ranging journey, from the textile and garment industries in Puerto Rico and the US South to picket lines, union halls, and Hollywood offices, where executives made consequential decisions about how to represent the American working class. In looking to the film representation of Norma Rae, Loiselle reveals that well-funded culture producers left audiences with a hollowed-out symbol of neoliberal individualism rather than the global working class fighting for collective rights. Loiselle reminds us that even our most beloved icons are complex historical and ideological constructions."—Jessica Wilkerson, author of To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice