Up Before Daybreak--Reading Journal

Up Before Daybreak: Cotton and People in America
By Deborah Hopkinson

In this non-fiction depiction of the history of the cotton industry and its affect on workers’ lives, Deborah Hopkinson focuses most of the book’s stories around families or children, which would help students relate to the content easily. Up Before Daybreak also contains several very poignant and heart-wrenching photographs. I particularly think that her last statement about considering where one’s clothes are made creates a powerful ending to a book dedicated to highlighting the hardships of work in cotton fields and mills. Many of the hardships (especially in regard to child labor) which America has long fought to overcome through regulation still exist in many countries around the world. Students need to be aware that the privileges most enjoy in America (free public education, child labor laws, and regulated minimum wage) have not always been around, nor are they a reality for many children their own age in other countries.

As I read this book, I thought about all of the activities that fill my children’s days—attending school, piano lessons, gymnastics, and church activities, among other things. I cannot imagine their having to work from break of day to after sunset in the cotton fields that surround our community or in a textile mill. Actually, I can’t imagine having to do that myself. Up Before Daybreak certainly highlights the grueling, tedious, and thankless work that thousands of poor children as well as adults have endured in the cotton industry. What a hard life!

Then I thought of all of the migrant children I have taught over the years. Although they may not experience all of the hardships that migrant children fifty years ago did, they may still find their lives not much improved (as far as their poverty level, the expectation of them to work before and after school and on weekends, and the vicious cycle in which some are caught of missing school, falling behind, becoming frustrated with trying to catch up, and eventually dropping out of school). Would they find this book too biographical? Inspiring? or Depressing?

The general information in this book is important for students to learn, and I think Up Before Daybreak would serve as a great resource for a class or individual research assignment. However, I found Hopkinson’s writing choppy, and I struggled to find a connecting thread that guided me (as a “weft” or “woof”) throughout the book. While the vignettes about individuals and families add appeal and a way for the reader to connect more personally with the text, they sound disjointed and crammed together. As a whole, Up Before Daybreak reads like an academic master’s thesis published in hardback—informative and interesting (especially the pictures)—but dry and disheartening.