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Up in the Rocky Mountains Writing the Swedish Immigrant Experience Jennifer Eastman Attebery |
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$60.00 cloth |
How Swedish immigrants became Westerners and Americans, as shown through their letters home. Before the turn of the twentieth century, many Swedish men emigrated to the American Rockies as itinerant laborers, drawn by the region’s developing industries. Single Swedish women ventured west, too, and whole families migrated, settling into farm communities. By 1920, one-fifth of all Swedish immigrants were living in the West. In Up in the Rocky Mountains, Jennifer Eastman Attebery offers a new perspective on Swedish immigrants’ experiences in Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico from 1880 to 1917 by interpreting their letters home. Considering more than three hundred letters, Attebery analyzes their storytelling, repetitive language, traditional phrasing, and metaphoric images. Recognizing the letters’ power as a folk form, Attebery sees in them the writers’ relationships back in Sweden as well as their encounters with religious and labor movements, regionalism, and nationalism in their new country. By defining personal letters as a vernacular genre, Attebery provides a model for discerning immigrants’ shared culture in correspondence collections. By studying their words, she brings to life small Swedish communities throughout the Rocky Mountain region. “Eastman’s research and analysis are thoroughly insightful and helpful to anyone interested in nineteenth century Scandinavian immigration and folklore. The book is very well organized and thoughtful; it is easy to read and stimulating. For readers interested in Scandinavian emigration, particularly to the American West, this book contributes greatly to the field and provides innovative ways of interpreting the Swedish immigrant experience.” —Utah Historical Quarterly “Attebery succeeds admirably in bringing Swedish immigrants’ letters and daily routines to life for the reader. Her explication of immigrants’ letters as a vernacular genre constitutes a significant contribution to folklore and history. Her analysis is lively and persuasive, and the well-chosen photographs help the reader understand what it was like to be ‘up in the Rocky Mountains’ around the turn of the twentieth century.” —Journal of Folklore Research “Up in the Rocky Mountains is an interesting and highly useful contribution to Swedish American scholarship and its related fields.” —American Historical Review Jennifer Eastman Attebery is professor of English and director of American studies at Idaho State University. 232 pages | 21 halftones, 3 maps | 5 7⁄8 x 9 | 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS AcknowledgmentsA Note on Translations Preface: Expanding Swedish America Westward 1. Vernacular Writing: Letter Writing as a Folk Practice 2. “Thanks for the Letter”: The Shape of the Genre 3. “Here Are Many Swedes”: Nodes and Networks of Swedish Settlement in the Rockies 4. “I Work Every Day”: Becoming American Workers 5. “I Am Sending Money”: Old Country and New 6. “Out West”: Identifying with a New Region 7. “God’s Good Gift”: Religious Language in the Rocky Mountain Letters 8. Identity, Genre, Meaning: What We Learn from Reading Vernacular Letters Appendix: The Letter Writers and Twenty Letters Notes Bibliography Index |
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$20.00 paper