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 Living
My Life by
Emma
Goldman
Forget all those New Left memoirs: for readers
who want to know what it is to be a revolutionary in America,
this is the book to read. At the turn of the 20th century, Emma
Goldman (1869-1940) was probably the most hated woman in her
adopted country. (She emigrated from Russia at age 17.) It was
bad enough that she was an anarchist, accused of complicity in
the 1901 assassination of President McKinley. But her vehement
espousal of women's rights--including birth control--really
enraged upright citizens. Goldman's marvelously militant
autobiography gives ample evidence of her gift for bearing a
grudge and inability to mince words--she decries fellow leftists
at least as often as the bourgeoisie, especially after she is
deported to the Soviet Union in 1919 and discovers that the
Bolshevik Revolution is not what she hoped for. But Goldman's
blazing honesty and unflinching commitment to unpopular causes
make her a larger-than-life heroine. She does display the
occasional human weakness, including a lengthy romance with a
man whose infidelities torment this advocate of free love, but
they're less interesting than her heroic challenge to America to
live up to its ideals. Whether or not she was literally a bomb
thrower remains a matter of debate. For posterity, her words are
incendiary enough. --Wendy Smith
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here for more Emma Goldman Books
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Maintained by University of California at Berkeley.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) stands as a major figure in the history of American radicalism
and feminism. An influential and well-known anarchist of her day, Goldman was an early
advocate of free speech, birth control, women's equality and independence, union
organization, and the eight-hour work day. Her criticism of mandatory conscription of
young men into the military during World War I led to a two-year imprisonment, followed by
her deportation in 1919. For the rest of her life until her death in 1940, she continued
to participate in the social and political movements of her age, from the Russian
Revolution to the Spanish civil war...
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Candace Falk, Editor and Director; Stephen
Cole, Associate Editor; Sally Thomas, Assistant Editor. This site includes:
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