First Laugh: Essays, 2000-2009

This new volume collects 19 essays that feminist writer, artist, and social activist Randall wrote in the first decade of the 21st century. Randall (To Change the World: My Years in Cuba) shares George Orwell's interest in the relationship between politics and language, taking on rhetorical phrases like "the American people" and "this great country," and many of these essays address that concern. But in the deeply personal "Rolling Eyes," Randall honors the memory of her mother while vowing to never be like her, or as she adroitly puts it, "deliberately refusing to become a prisoner of my own idiosyncrasies." She discusses the synesthesia she suffers from (a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory pathway is experienced in another) and her concerns about Alzheimer's. "My Losses" eloquently combines the personal and the political, as Randall remembers the people she has lost over a great many years, drawing a comparison between the death of loved ones and the loss of ideals. For Randall and her compatriots, "1989 marked more than the beginning of the end of socialism," but signaled "...a complex global turning away from values of justice and fairness and hope." Randall is a sincere, poetic, and compelling narrator, and her latest collection offers something for everyone. (Mar.)