Bonnie Smith Yackel My Mother Never Worked Analysis

My mother never worked of 1975 was written by Bonnie Smith-Yackel. She, born in 1937, was raised into a farming family of about nearly a dozen members. From Willmar, Minnesota, Yackel was a published writer for many publications and local newspapers. This narrative piece was initially published in Women: A Journal of Liberation, and rightly so. It centers around her former stay-at-home mother and the diligent life she lived through her daughter’s eyes.
The essay begins with a phone call between Yackel and a Social Security Office worker. Her mother had just recently passed and Yackel was attempting to retrieve the $255 death benefit. As she is left on hold, she begins to reminisce her mother’s life and the struggles she endured. This form of dialogue both began and concluded the narrative. It is a unique form of telling the story of Martha Ruth Smith and the dedication to her family. She was first employed as a manager at the general store where she worked full time. It was thereafter when she was “wooed” by the man she had been conversing with via mail and married in February 1921, even though she dreaded the consequences that would come from being a “farmer’s wife.”

She worked through droughts, even from dawn until midnight, at times. It was 1969 when Martha Smith experienced a car accident, causing her to become paralyzed from the waist down. Although, even in a wheelchair, she continued working. It was even more difficult with the death of her husband in 1970, yet she persevered. It was after this thought that Yackel finally got off hold with the Social Security Office. The worker let her down by saying, “Your mother isn’t entitled to the $255 death benefit.” Yackel then responded with a “why?” and the worker answered, “Well, you see - your mother never