Poets Take On Guess Inc.: Poets Win

Poets Take On Guess Inc.: Poets Win

On September 18, 1997, Guess Inc. filed a libel/slander suit against the literary reading I had organized in support of the garment workers’ union UNITE that was organizing this garment manufacturer. How did my literary reading wind up getting sued by this corporation?

My involvement started when my grandmother sewed shirts at the Bennett, Hollander, and Louis pants factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A Russian Jewish immigrant teenager in 1906, her family sent her into the garment shop; her wages supported the family, letting her younger brothers and sisters go to school. My grandmother read Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem as well as Russians like Tolstoy - both were forces in their culture, and both had huge literary funerals in which 100,000 people showed up.