Why We Left

Joanna Brooks is professor and chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. She is the author of the award-winning American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures as well as The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith.

• Contents   Acknowledgments Introduction: Brave Men Run 1. No Land of Opportunity: Folk Ballads and the Story of Why We Left 2. Murder the Brother Who Killed the Tree: Fratricide and the Story of Deforestation 3. Two Sisters and a Beaver Hat: Desire and the Story of Colonial Commodity Culture 4. To Sink It in the Lonesome Sea: Betrayal and the Story of Indentured Servitude 5. Seduction of the House Carpenter’s Wife: Abandonment and the Story of ColonialMigration Epilogue: Ballad of the Laboring Poor   NotesBibliographyIndex

"Why We Left draws creatively on early folk ballads of England and America to make a surprising, bold, and altogether brilliant contribution to our understanding of why people crossed the Atlantic to live in a strange new world. Haunting voices sing to us across the centuries a rich and disturbing ‘history from below.’" -Marcus Rediker, author of The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom"Joanna Brooks compellingly recreates the lives of British peasants who came to the New World.  She traces their collective memories through the folk ballads sung by their descendants and collected diligently by scholars and revivalists. Riveting, harrowing, Why We Left will forever change the way we listen to ‘folk music.’" -Charles McGovern, William and Mary "Why We Left is an insightful, penetrating, sad, and yet delightful history of English migration to colonial America."-Journal of American Ethnic History"A remarkable achievement, Why We Left is a story of the grim costs of modernity that left remnants in cultural artifacts-a fascinating journey through unique and creative readings into the lives of the early Anglo-American poor, indentured servitude, the Atlantic world, balladry, and the personal upheavals wrought by the earliest pushes of European colonialism."-The Register"I would recommend [Why We Left] to anyone interested in looking at the ‘other side’ of colonization."-Journal of Folklore Research"Introduces an unexpected archive for American literary study: American folk ballads."-Resources for American Literary Study