Aimee Loiselle’s Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class Wins the 2023 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize

The Northeast Popular Culture Association is proud to honor Aimee Loiselle’s Beyond Norma Rae with the 2023 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize. Accessible in style yet rigorous in scope, this book reimagines the history behind the 1979 film Norma Rae and restores the diverse women’s voices that Hollywood sidelined.

At the heart of Loiselle’s narrative are Gloria Maldonado, a Puerto Rican garment worker, and Crystal Lee Sutton, a white textile worker from the South. Both turned to union organizing as a means to confront exploitation and claim fuller lives as leaders and advocates. While Sutton’s story was taken up by Hollywood and immortalized in Sally Field’s Oscar-winning performance, Maldonado’s equally powerful contributions lived on in oral history projects, bilingual exhibitions, and grassroots archives.

Loiselle demonstrates how this uneven record is a telling reflection of how race, gender, and citizenship shape which struggles reach the cultural mainstream. She traces how the Norma Rae icon, immortalized by a still from the movie of Sally Field, standing tall and alone, holding a UNION sign high above her head, circulated through the 1980s and beyond, embodying a narrative of individual defiance that resonated with and reinforced the rise of neoliberal individualism.

By weaving together archival research, oral histories, and cultural analysis, Beyond Norma Rae reframes the story of working-class women and shows how cultural politics reverberate across generations. It is a timely and necessary work that deepens our understanding of labor, immigration, and the contested meanings of American working-class identity.