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Table of Contents
About The Book
The revelatory history of the American labor movement, from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly, now adapted for young readers.
The history of American labor is full of incredible leaders, organizers, and workers, but not all of them have gotten the recognition they deserve.
People like…
Rosina Tucker, a Black woman who helped railroad workers organize the first Black-led labor union in America,
Maria Moreno, an Indigenous and Mexican woman who fought for farmworkers in the fields of California,
Ah Quon McElrath, a Chinese Hawaiian woman who united the laborers of the vast sugarcane plantations,
Ben Fletcher, a Black dockworker who organized a strong, interracial union that ran the ports of Philadelphia,
Judy Heumann, a disabled Jewish schoolteacher who became the mother of the Disability Rights Movement…and many more.
With blood, sweat, and tears, they fought to win the rights we hold so dear today.
Their voices reveal the true history of American labor.
The history of American labor is full of incredible leaders, organizers, and workers, but not all of them have gotten the recognition they deserve.
People like…
Rosina Tucker, a Black woman who helped railroad workers organize the first Black-led labor union in America,
Maria Moreno, an Indigenous and Mexican woman who fought for farmworkers in the fields of California,
Ah Quon McElrath, a Chinese Hawaiian woman who united the laborers of the vast sugarcane plantations,
Ben Fletcher, a Black dockworker who organized a strong, interracial union that ran the ports of Philadelphia,
Judy Heumann, a disabled Jewish schoolteacher who became the mother of the Disability Rights Movement…and many more.
With blood, sweat, and tears, they fought to win the rights we hold so dear today.
Their voices reveal the true history of American labor.
About The Author
Photograph by Liz Kross
Kim Kelly is a labor reporter for In These Times magazine and has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018. Her writing on labor, class, politics, disability, and culture has appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and many others. Kelly has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV. Previously, she was the heavy metal editor at Noisey, Vice’s music vertical, and helped organize the Vice union. A third-generation union member, she served three terms as an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East Council. Her first book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, was published in 2022. She was born in the heart of the South Jersey Pine Barrens and currently lives in Philadelphia with a hard-workin’ man, a couple of taxidermy bears, and way too many books.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (May 6, 2025)
- Length: 320 pages
- ISBN13: 9781665937290
- Ages: 10 - 99
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Raves and Reviews
Rousing tales of courageous workers who dared to fight for better, safer jobs.
In this young readers’ version of Fight Like Hell (2022), Kelly leaves out the chapter on activist sex workers and recasts the rest into individual profiles of 22 organizers and advocates. Giants in the great struggle, like Frances Perkins, Mother Jones, Eugene V. Debs (who ran for president from prison in 1920), and Judy Heumann have entries, and she also includes more recent, lesser-known heroes. The subjects are diverse, including people of color, immigrants, and other people from marginalized groups. Kelly chronicles their triumphs and tragedies and their relentless battles with largely faceless, uniformly hostile bosses. Her rhetoric often takes a fiery turn: “I could feel the heat roll off her words,” she writes about an interview with Jennifer Bates, one of the leaders in a bitter, ongoing struggle against “Jeff Bezos’s goons” to unionize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Still, she reminds readers that her most iconic subjects were complex, fallible humans, acknowledging Bayard Rustin’s support for the war in Vietnam, for example, or how César Chávez and Dolores Huerta froze their longtime co-worker Maria Moreno out of the United Farm Workers. A passionate read that would pair well with J. Albert Mann’s Shift Happens (2024), Kelly’s central message shines through. “Collective working-class power is behind every step forward this country has made.”
Fiercely partisan, rich in role models. (source notes) (Nonfiction. 12-16)
– Kirkus, 4/1/25
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Fight to Win! Hardcover 9781665937290
- Author Photo (jpg): Kim Kelly Photograph by Liz Kross(0.1 MB)
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