Uprising

Uprising

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

It still amazes me how many books I read that have a connection to NYU in some way. This time, a character in the story was an NYU second-year law student attempting to assist the main character.  It reminds me how lucky I am to be working at NYU, a place that impacts so many people!  The book, Uprising, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, describes the story of three young women all brought together by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (located in a building I can see from my office window in Kimmel Center). The book chronicles the stories of the three main characters and how their lives lead to their employment at the factory.  All three are immigrants who face the struggles of working in sub-human conditions for menial wages under barbaric supervisors.  It is a retrospective story in that one of the small children whose father owned the factory begins trying to find a woman who lived through the fire. She happens to be one of the three woman whom we meet throughout the book.  The three fight against the factory by forming a union, which meets resistance.  The events leading to the fire, the inferno itself, and what happens to the three friends is detailed in the following chapters.  The story ends full circle noting that the sole survivor of the three women carries her two friends with her as a memory through her own children.  Amazing to imagine the cruel and inhumane ways people were treated in the US….  But have we really completely changed?  An important story to never forget.