Fireweed: A Political Autobiography [Paperback]

Gerda Lerner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2003

In "Fireweed", Gerda Lerner, a pioneer and leading scholar in women's history, tells her story of moral courage and commitment to social change with a novelist's skill and a historian's command of context. Lerner's memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. The child of a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she was still a teenager when a fascist regime came to power in 1934, and she became involved in the underground resistance movement. The Nazi takeover of Austria cast her into prison, then forced her and her family into exile; she alone was able to leave Europe. Once in the United States, she experienced the harshness of the Depression and despair over the fate of her family. Still, she persisted in adapting to the new culture and to becoming a writer. Here she met and married her life-long partner, Carl Lerner, a film editor and director. Together they become deeply involved in left-wing activities, from struggling to unionize the film industry and resisting the blacklist in Hollywood to community organizing for peace, for an interracial civil rights movement, and for better schools in New York City. Lerner insists that her decades of grassroots organizing largely account for the theoretical insights she was later able to bring to the development of women's history. In "Fireweed", Lerner presents her life in the context of the major historical events of the twentieth century and the repression of dissent. Hers is a gripping story about surviving hardship and summoning the courage to live according to one's convictions. The author's note: Gerda Lerner, a past president of the Organization of American Historians, is Robinson-Edwards Professor of History, Emerita, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her eleven books in history include "Creation of Patriarchy", "Creation of Feminist Consciousness", "Why History Matters", and "Black Women in White America: A Documentary History".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lerner has enjoyed a brilliant academic career, a pioneer who virtually created her own discipline women's history and wrote some of the central texts in the field (such as The Creation of Patriarchy). But she came to scholarship quite late; she was over 40 when she earned her bachelor's degree. Before that she was a refugee, a divorc‚e, the mother of two children, a political activist and a member of the Communist Party. Now in her early 80s, Lerner looks back not on the years of prominence but on those early decades that shaped her thought and made her life's work possible. Born into a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she was imprisoned by the Nazis after the anschluss, narrowly escaping to America and leaving her family behind. Her immediate family survived the Holocaust, but Lerner was never again to see her mother, who died in Europe of multiple sclerosis. The story of her mother's amazing flowering as an artist and tragic death is the emotional heart of the book; its intellectual core is Lerner's account of her political life in the United States. Unlike many ex-Communists who recount their past with guilt and shame, Lerner maintains that, despite the compromises and blindness of those years, the party spoke to what was best in her nature her commitment to social justice and racial equality. The hot-pink blossoms of the fireweed, which can only bloom on burnt-over ground, provide an apt metaphor for this memoir, one certain to find a deserved place in every collection of indispensable works of women's history. 24 b&w illus.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Past president of the Organization of American Historians and the author of numerous books of history and essays (e.g., Why History Matters), Lerner has produced a grand and beautiful work, well organized and written in clean, lovely prose. Her aim is to examine the life she led prior to her pioneering achievements as a distinguished academic in the field of women's history, a career she entered only after age 40 and years of activism and writing. Born in 1920 into a comfortable Jewish family in Vienna, Lerner was sheltered until 1938, when Germany occupied Austria. With scrupulous scholarship and deep humanity, Lerner details her life as a helpless outsider including her imprisonment and exploitation as a stateless refugee as well as her family relationships and intellectual development. Her accounts of Austria's spontaneous anti-Semitism, her "tiny gestures of defiance," and the loving community she found among feminist scholars and activists are all fascinating; many readers will be particularly intrigued by her description of Hollywood during the blacklist, which deeply affected her film director husband. In a world where accuracy and emotional honesty are often deplorably absent, Fireweed is a rare and valuable contribution. Recommended for all libraries. Elaine Machleder, Bronx, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; 1st edition (August 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592132367
• ISBN-13: 978-1592132362
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #247,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A HISTORIAN'S PERSONAL VIEW OF 20TH CENTURY CRISES, July 13, 2002

By 

Lawrence Levine (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Critical Perspectives On The P) (Hardcover)

Gerda Lerner, one of our most important historians, has written a magnificently honest and perceptive autobiography. She takes us through her youth in Vienna, her imprisonment by the Nazis, her escape to the United States where she married, raised children and built a new life, her years in Hollywood and New York, and her experiences as a radical during the McCarthy period. It is an engrossing, very human story that will touch and enlighten all who read it. We can only hope that Lerner will follow it with a volume that relates the story of her years as a historian who helped to create modern women's history.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fireweed, July 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Critical Perspectives On The P) (Hardcover)

An honest, courageous and illuminating account of a radical life. Also a reminder that our current troubles are not unique. Lerner's account of the persecution of members of the Communist Party USA during the 1950's, the abrogation of their civil rights and the threat to their livelihood should be a warning to us today.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fireweed: a Political Autobiography, December 19, 2011

By 

Kim Burdick (NEWARK, DE, US) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Paperback)

This is an important and thought-provoking book that deserves far more attention than it has received.

The book's metaphoric title, "Fireweed," comes from 'Epilobium angustifolium,' a beautiful magenta-flowered plant that grows rapidly in disturbed and burned-over areas of soil.

Lerner is usually seen as a feminist writer, but this book has far broader significance. It should be read by all who are interested in world politics, Nazi and Communist ideology, and the triumph of the human spirit.

The first part of the book talks about Lerner's experiences as a middle-class Austrian who happens to be Jewish. Her memories go a long way towards explaining how the Nazi movement slowly engulfed not only Austria but most of Western Europe.

The second part, life in America during McCarthyism and the years of the Cold War, is both pro-American and troubling. Here Lerner begins to feel distress as she sees the universal patterns of human behavior.

She writes:

"Like all true believers, I believed as I did because I needed to believe: in a utopian vision for the future, in the possibility of human perfectibility, in idealism and heroism. And I still need that belief, even if the particular vision I had embraced has turned to ashes."

Lerner's writing is engaging and the book is hard to put down. Her real power lies in a clear-eyed view of human nature.

A particularly helpful feature of the book is that clusters of world news headlines and their dates are scattered throughout the text, providing a clear framework for Lerner's own memories.

This is an excellent book that should be required reading for anyone teaching World History ll, Western Civ, or Post-Civil War American History.

Kim Burdick

Stanton, Delaware