Introducing Activist Explorer’s first Fiction Featuring Activists Friday:
During the Roaring Twenties, teen sisters Bessie and Jo dream of Hollywood and Egyptian pyramids while they paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials at the American Radium factory in New Jersey. Jo becomes mysteriously ill with what turns out to be radiation poisoning. Bessie joins her communist friends to seek the truth behind the company doctor’s contemptuous dismissal of her sister’s and other “radium girls'” suffering, convincing her co-workers to file a lawsuit against American Radium.
We initiate our Fiction Featuring Activists Friday suggestions with the 2018 film Radium Girls. It is a fitting work for this moment, highlighting women’s history, activism, and resistance to radiation poisoning, that is, just one of the devastating effects that would result from nuclear confrontation or meltdown.
The 2018 drama is based on a real case that eventually had a lasting impact on workplace health and safety, and on the study of radioactivity.
See the film, both because it is a good story, and because witnessing radiation’s effects, and the courageous and intelligent resistance of these young women, might help inspire us to the struggles we must wage in this moment.
Each Friday, look for an example of fiction featuring folks fighting for social justice. The examples may not all be necessarily the most full and fair representation of activists, but they do all center characters, plots, and settings associated with people organizing together to make change, in contrast to the generally individualistic picture we get from most mainstream fiction.
There is a non-fiction book called Radium Girls by Kate Moore that came out in 2017. I don't know if the film is based on it but the book is pretty good. Sadly, many people, especially women of color, continue to be exposed to toxins in the name of progress and entertainment. Thanks for posting on this.