Living My Life, Vol. 1 [Paperback]

Emma Goldman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1970

Volume 1 of the candid, no-holds-barred account by American anarchist Goldman relates her philosophical and political journey through life, beginning with her emigration from Russia to the U.S. in 1886.

 

 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

About the Author

Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (now Kaunas in Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 503 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (June 1, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486225437
• ISBN-13: 978-0486225432
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #424,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emma Goldman's autobiography--an essential document, April 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Living My Life, Vol. 1 (Paperback)

Goldman's autobiography is a long read, but I implore anyone with a critical mind and a feeling of social consiousness to pick it up at once. The book is testimony of the powerful eloquence and charisma of Emma Goldman, who managed to weave the minute details of the lives of some of our most brilliant and--by virtue of their radicalism--unknown revolutionary activists of turn-of-the-century America and abroad into an absorbing and intense piece of non-fiction. The historical events recorded in this autobiography--often day-by-day accounts--reveal a different perspective of what we're taught in high school history classes, which often portray great movements in societies as the product of one person's toil--usually an ex-president. Goldman chronicles a huge network of vibrant social activists--Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, Humanists, Suffragists, just to name a few--who often worked long hours by day to support themselves while working for their causes at night.

The details are both inspiring and disturbing, as the actions of the American public and its government against immigrants, activists, or anyone else whom it deemed un-american are described with clarity by the victim who lived through it, and not by the patriot historian. One of the most heartwrenching descriptions in the entire book is the mass deportation to Russia on Christmas, 1919, of hundreds of first and second-generation Russian immigrants(Goldman included), many of whom could not even speak Russian.

Much of the second volume is devoted to Goldman's life in Russia after her deportation--a period of her life that is a book in itself. It includes rich details of post-revolutionary Russia-- conversations with Lenin, train rides to remote regions of the country, visits to towns deracinated by the Russian pogroms against the Jews, and her eventual unceremonious departure from the country.

As I already mentioned, the book is a long read. I'd recommend taking a break between volumes one and two. It's worth the time it takes to get through it. Emma Goldman's autobiography is an essential document for anyone who harbors a passion for social change, a curiousity about turn-of-the-century America or the Bolshevik Revolution, or just enjoys good non-fiction.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living Beyond Expectations, June 27, 2001

By 

Elderbear (Loma Linda, Aztlan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living My Life, Vol. 1 (Paperback)

In her autobiography Emma Goldman explains her life, narrating the experience of marching to her own drummer. Depending on the reader's political expectations, Emma's life is either inspiring or downright terrifying. Those who believe in social conformity would probably be more comfortable moving on to other fodder.

Nevertheless, this eyewitness account of American and Russian history, ought not to be trivially dismissed. Emma fought for things we have taken for granted in modern life, such as birth-control and the eight-hour work day; she went to jail in the struggle to obtain these for us. This book explains how she lived her commitment to individual liberty, choosing who she would love, advocating revolution, and harrassing those of her "allies" who compromised on these principles.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of the book is her years in Russia. Here she describes arriving at the "Promised Land" of the peoples' revolution and how that mutated into a sense of disillusionment and horror at what she saw as the betrayal of that revolution by the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Her writing style is nothing exceptional, but the story she weaves from the material of her life is nothing short of fascinating. Another reviewer suggested taking a break between volumes--I couldn't! I had to know what happened next.

Although there are a lot of pages to wade through, I will give this book as a gift to the young women in my life. I believe that Emma can serve as a role model for living one's own life, not living out the expectations of friends, family, or society. In a dysfunctional world, we have too few people who model this.

Emma gets three stars for writing style, but the powerful and plentiful content bring the rating up to five stars. Not to be missed.

(If you'd like to discuss this book or review, click on the "about me" link above & drop me an email. Thanks!)

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable book, fun to read, informative, September 21, 2002

By 

Samuel Krikorian (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living My Life, Vol. 1 (Paperback)

I could not disagree more with Goldman's ultimate philosophical conclusions, but I enjoyed this book, and volume II as well. Her essential humanity emerges, and it is a good case study and an interesting read, historically, philosophically and personally. She is no Mark Twain or Billy Faulkner, but her life was interesting and her prose adequately conveys the milieu she became enmeshed in. A fair degree of antecedent historical knowledge is necessary to fully enjoy this book, but you most likely have that or you wouldn't be reading about Emma to begin with. If you don't, or find that you are getting lost in the history and sequence, it would pay to do a little research to better understand what she lived through. It will also help you spot bias on Goldman's part. I heartily recommend this book. It is informative, enlightening and entertaining to boot.