Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster - Cultural References

Cultural References

• Muriel Rukeyser wrote a poetry sequence, "The Book of the Dead", about this disaster, which can be found in her book, U.S. 1 (published in 1938).

• Hubert Skidmore, a West Virginian, immortalized the tragic events from the common man's perspective in his book Hawk's Nest which followed the fictional accounts of several tunnel workers and their families. Skidmore wrote the book only a few years after the incident (originally published in 1941) and likely used direct sources for his story development.

• Hawks Nest is also mentioned in a section entitled Dying for a Living: The Hawk's Nest Incident in the book Trust Us, We're Experts by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber.

• In the young adult fiction novel The Miner's Daughter by Gretchen Moran Laskas, the main character's father and older brother go to work on the Hawks Nest Tunnel after their coal mine is shut down. The two men return less than a year later because the father is gravely ill with a cough.

• Dwight Harshbarger, a native West Virginian, wrote the novel Witness at Hawks Nest. This historical fiction novel tells the tragic story of America's worst, yet least known, industrial disaster.

• David Pushkin, a native West Virginian, is developing a documentary with the working title: Hawks Nest Tunnel: A Documentary. It's an investigative documentary that digs deeply into the largely untold story of government and big business. It uncovers the voices and faces of West Virginians who were impacted by our nation’s largest industrial tragedy. www.hawksnestmovie.org