In Moisture of the Earth, Mary Robinson recounts her journey from picking cotton in rural Alabama to becoming an outspoken community leader and labor activist. The daughter of sharecroppers, Robinson came of age at the peak of the civil rights movement and took a job in J. P. Stevens's Montgomery plant when the textile manufacturing giant was forced to admit African American workers. She soon became part of the historic organizing struggle by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, finding her voice as an outspoken activist and union organizer. This is a riveting narrative of determination and defiance in the face of poverty and racial injustice, and a rare, behind-the-scenes account of union organizing drives in the South, from the vantage point of a black woman. Based on twenty-three years of interviews between Mary Robinson and oral historian Fran Leeper Buss, this book reveals the intertwined effects of race, class, and gender on the lives of lower-income women during segregation and after; sheds light on African American resistance movements in the twentieth century and the roles of religious traditions and storytelling to struggles for social justice; and highlights women's important roles in community activism and the labor movement.

We’re Thankful for the Moisture contains personal essays by award-winning humor columnist Eli McCann for The Salt Lake Tribune, along with corresponding cartoons by the Tribune’s Pat Bagley. McCann explores cultural Mormonism and his experiences growing up in Utah as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1990s, coming out as gay in adulthood, leaving his faith, and navigating life in Salt Lake City with his husband and their young child. Known for his observational humor, nostalgia, and compassion for those in his community who span the religious spectrum, McCann weaves together the silliness that often comes out of communal traditions with the humanity of those who hold those traditions dear. “I still think there’s no better sound than the background noise of neighbors being neighbors,” he writes, ”the simple hum of a people gathered.” While there is much humor to be found in baffling cultural entreaties, like McCann’s grandmother sincerely claiming that nineteenth-century Mormon pioneers wouldn’t trade places with those who live in 2025, or parents justifying a curfew time by insisting “the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight,” there is also beauty in what prompts a person to believe such things. McCann’s writings seek to prove just that.