Packinghouse Daughter

This is a unique blend of memoir, myth, and the lost history of a Midwestern labour town. The daughter of a packinghouse worker, Cheri Register vividly recalls the 1959 meat-packers strike that devastated and divided her hometown. Haunted by memories of her confused coming-of-age in the midst of the strike, she embarks on historical research through newspaper items, state records, company and union archives. Where no written account exists, she conducts interviews of participants on both sides of the strike -- all in an effort to understand when the rift between the company and its workers began and why it ran so deep. The more she probes, the more she finds that she can no longer divide labour issues into the simplified terms of her youth. As part of the first generation of her family to attend college, much less attain a PhD, Register struggles to acknowledge such complexities without dishonouring her past. Her journey reflects the inner conflict felt by a generation propelled into the middle class by post-War prosperity, people like herself who feel caught between the blue-collar values of the communities we left behind and our new status as the 'rich' people we used to scoff at.