"For my very first day in union construction I was sent to a bank in downtown Boston where a journeyman needed a hand pulling wire. Arriving early with my new tools and pouch, I knocked on the glass door in the high-rise lobby and explained to the guard that I was a new apprentice working for the electrical contractor. He refused to let me in. So I sat down on the tile floor, my backpack and toolpouch beside me, and waited for the man whose name I had written down alongside the address and directions on a piece of paper: Dan. The guard explained to Dan later that he'd figured I was a terrorist planning to bomb the bank. In 1978, that seemed more likely than that I might actually be an apprentice electrician."Susan Eisenberg began her apprenticeship with Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in 1978, the year President Jimmy Carter set goals and timetables for the hiring of women on federally assisted construction projects and for the inclusion of women in apprenticeship programs. Eisenberg expected not only a challenging job and the camaraderie of a labor union but also the chance to be part of a historic transformation, social and economic, that would make the construction trades accessible to women.That transformation did not happen. In this book, full of the raw drama and humor found on a construction site, Eisenberg gracefully weaves the voices of thirty women who worked as carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, painters, and plumbers to examine why their numbers remained small. Speaking as if to a friend, women recall their decisions to enter the trades, their first days on the job, and their strategies to gain training and acceptance. They assess, with thought, passion, and twenty years' perspective, the affirmative action efforts. Eisenberg ends with a discussion of the practices and policies that would be required to uproot gender barriers where they are deeply embedded in the organization and culture of the workplace.

We'll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction

Biographies & Memoirs

Eisenberg, Susan

Community & Culture

Ilr Pr

Poems in this volume bring readers through the construction site gate alongside the women who practice a skilled trade in a dangerous industry. Assured and impassioned, the poems not only manifest outer events and day-to-day realities of the worksite but also expose through metaphor and resonant detail its high-voltage interior life.Susan Eisenberg's early poems were private responses to the experiences of her apprentice years as an electrician. When a collection of her poems was published in 1984, Eisenberg began to receive letters from her counterparts in other trades and other regions of the country. Her ensuing dialogue with a national community of tradeswomen inspired the poems in Pioneering.

Pioneering: Poems from the Construction Site

Business & Money

Industries

ILR PRESS

We'll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (Ilr Press Books)

Blind Spot

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

THE BACKWATERS PRESS

Poet and visual artist Susan Eisenberg’s fourth collection lyrically explores the particular doctor-patient relationships, medical experiences, encounters, and adjustments of longterm chronic illness. Perpetual Care takes the reader from “whirlpools/of symptoms that shifted shape,” through diagnosis of lupus and thyroid cancer, to navigate between scares and dailiness. Striking fine art photographs of her medication bottles traversing a Victorian cemetery through changing seasons, complement these strong poems. From the back cover: “In this powerful collection, Eisenberg captures the essence of being a patient in the modern health care system. Always poignant, at times playful, Eisenberg’s economical and evocative words allow the reader to experience the full array of emotion associated with being a patient. I have shared these treasures with my patients and professional colleagues alike. So real, so true, so honest—at times breathtaking!” —Donald I. Abrams, MD, Chief, Hematology-Oncology, San Francisco General Hospital “Incisive, lively, witty, Perpetual Care brilliantly defies its subject matter. Using an impressive range of forms, styles, and metaphors, Susan Eisenberg draws us deeply into the emotional complexities of a 'flock of illnesses.' Whatever your background—as patient and/or provider—you will find this book difficult to put down. The poet’s striking photographs add resonance to both the title and these surprisingly hopeful poems.” — Martha Collins, poet, Blue Front “Through this haunting collection of poetry and photographic images, we bear witness to the patient’s experience with the uncertainties of illness, the sharp edges of the health care system, and the communication divide between patient and doctor, guided, challenged, inspired, and humbled by Eisenberg’s stark humor, wisdom and resilience.” —Barbara Gottlieb, MD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston

Perpetual Care

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Diseases & Physical Ailments

Third Rail Press

The fiercely lyrical poetry of Stanley’s Girl is rooted in Susan Eisenberg’s experience as one of the first women to enter the construction industry and from her decades gathering accounts of others to give scaffolding to that history. Eisenberg charts her own induction into the construction workplace culture and how tradeswomen from across the country grappled with what was required to become a team player and succeed in a dangerous workplace where women were unwelcome. The specifics of construction become metaphor as she explores resonances in other spheres―from family to other social and political issues―where violence, or its threat, maintains order. Prying open memory, her poems investigate how systems of discrimination, domination, and exclusion are maintained and how individuals and institutions accommodate to injustice and its agreed-on lies, including her own collusion. Poems in this collection probe workplace-linked suicide, sexual assault, and sometimes-fatal intentional accidents, as well as the role of bystander silence and the responsibility of witness.

Stanley’s Girl: Poems

Economics

Susan Eisenberg began her apprenticeship with Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in 1978, the year president Jimmy Carter set goals and timetables for the hiring of women on federally assisted construction projects and for the inclusion of women in apprenticeship programs. Eisenberg expected not only a challenging job and the camaraderie of a labor union but also the chance to be part of a historic transformation, social and economic, that would make the construction trades accessible to women.That transformation did not happen. In this book, full of the raw drama and humor found on a construction site, Eisenberg gracefully weaves the voices of thirty women who worked as carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, painters, and plumbers to examine why their numbers remained small. Speaking as if to a friend, women recall their decisions to enter the trades, their first days on the job, and their strategies to gain training and acceptance. They assess with thought, passion, and twenty years' perspective the affirmative action efforts. Eisenberg introduces this new edition with a preface that shows how things have changed and how they have stayed the same since the book’s original publication. She ends with a discussion of the practices and policies that would be required to uproot gender barriers where they are deeply embedded in the organization and culture of the workplace.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eisenberg, Susan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Eisenberg, Susan