Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life

"If I can't dance, I'm not coming to your revolution," declared Emma Goldman, encapsulating a lifetime dedicated to the entwined causes of personal and collective liberation. Focusing on the former, Gornick (The Men in My Life) has written an emotional and sexual biography of the anarchist leader who was known as "the most notorious woman in America." A stirring lecturer and valiant advocate for social justice in the U.S. a century ago, here, "our Emma" is resurrected for the present, with Gornick transposing Goldman's Victorian struggles for personal liberation onto the countercultural and feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s. Eschewing long discussions of political philosophy, or much in the way of historical context, Gornick understands activism as an emotive state: "Anarchism itself is a protean experience, as much a posture, an attitude, a frame of mind and spirit as it is a doctrine." Though she believed that free love pursued between equals could never end in jealousy or subjugation, Goldman spent a lifetime in bad relationships. With wit and insight, Gornick urges readers to feel what Goldman felt, to ponder what made her kick against conditions that her contemporaries meekly accepted, and to ask whether things are so different today. (Oct.)