Westmoreland County Community College Library: Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker: By Studs Terkel

By Studs Terkel

Lori Jakiela opens her book Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker, with a prologue about meeting journalist Studs Turkel and the influence of his works on her life. "No one had yet taught me to write what I knew. Even if they tried, I wouldn't have listened. I believed my life, what I knew, was too ordinary and small to be worthy of art. But in Studs' work, there were these voices, so familiar to me, voices exactly like the ones I'd listened to when I was small and could hide under my grandmother's dining room table during Sunday dinners...It's important not to lose those stories. I learned that from reading [Turkel's] Working. Everyone's life matters and is worthy of art. There is no such thing as an ordinary life."

Working by Studs Terkel
Call Number: HD8072 .T4
Published in 1974. Terkel’s classic oral history of Americans’ working lives—and the inspiration for Barack Obama’s Netflix series about work in the twenty-first century. A compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a moving snapshot of people’s feelings about their working lives, as well as a timeless look at how work fits into American life. Nearly fifty years after its initial publication, Working remains a deeply relevant American classic, one of the most important works of oral history ever published.
Hard Times by Studs Terkel
Call Number: E806 .T45
Published in 1970. Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, striking workers, and Okies, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the 1929 stock market crash and its repercussions radically changed the lives of a generation.
Race by Studs Terkel
Call Number: E184.A1 T46 1992
Terkel examines a leading issue in American politics, presenting the feelings of nearly one hundred Americans on such issues as affirmative action, changing neighborhoods, secret prejudices, and more.
Coming of Age by Studs Terkel
Call Number: HQ1064.U5 T44 1995
A panorama of American life and work throughout the 20th century from the mouths of 74 very different people, the youngest of whom is 70 and the oldest 99 years old. The text traces the extraordinary ways in which working lives changed from previous generations.
My American Century by Studs Terkel
Call Number: CT220 .T43 1997
Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian Studs Terkel's "greatest hits." This collects the best of his interviews and the introductions from each of his eight classic books, along with an introduction to Terkel's work by Robert Coles. It is both a stellar collection of portraits and a panoramic chronicle of America from the 1920s to the 90s.