Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Candid and intimate accounts of the factory-worker tragedy that shaped American labor rights

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch Building in Greenwich Village, New York. The top three floors housed the Triangle Waist Company, a factory where approximately 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women and girls, labored to produce fashionable cotton blouses, known as “waists.”

The fire killed 146 workers in a mere 15 minutes but pierced the perpetual conscience of...