Description
Book SynopsisLatinas on the Line provides a compelling analysis and historical and theoretical grounding of the oral histories, never before seen, of Latina information workers in the Bell System from their entrance in 1973 to their retirements by 2015. Author Melissa Villa-Nicholas demonstrates the importance of Latinas of the field of telecommunications through their own words and uses supporting archival research to provide an overview of how Latinas engage and remember a critical analysis of their work place, information technologies, and the larger globalized economy and shifting borderlands through their intersectional identities as information workers. The book offers a rich and engaging portrait of the critical history of Latinas in telecommunications, from their manual to automated to digitized labor.
Trade Review“Villa-Nicholas weaves together oral histories and social politics to deliver an encompassing history about Latina information laborers and how they were embedded into telecommunications. It is a deeply compassionate book about community and resilience amidst discrimination and corporate uncertainties at AT&T.” -- Sharra Vostral * author of Toxic Shock: A Social History *
“Melissa Villa-Nicholas deftly shows how our telecommunications infrastructure, and the labor that undergirds it, have been central to struggles for civil rights.
Latinas On The Line is a beautifully written, deeply personal history of a tech labor force that has been simultaneously ubiquitous and hidden—it is a history that holds important lessons about modernization, marginalization, and the exclusion still built in to STEM workforces.” -- Mar Hicks * author of Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing *
“Villa-Nicholas weaves together oral histories and social politics to deliver an encompassing history about Latina information laborers and how they were embedded into telecommunications. It is a deeply compassionate book about community and resilience amidst discrimination and corporate uncertainties at ATT.” -- Sharra Vostral * author of Toxic Shock: A Social History *
“Melissa Villa-Nicholas deftly shows how our telecommunications infrastructure, and the labor that undergirds it, have been central to struggles for civil rights.
Latinas On The Line is a beautifully written, deeply personal history of a tech labor force that has been simultaneously ubiquitous and hidden—it is a history that holds important lessons about modernization, marginalization, and the exclusion still built in to STEM workforces.” -- Mar Hicks * author of Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Comp *
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Why Latinas? Overlapping Technology Histories
2 The Invisible Information Worker
3 Latinas on the Line
4 We Were Family
5 The Telecommunications Life Cycle: Lorraine
6 Conclusion
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
