Split: A Counterculture Childhood [Paperback]

Lisa Michaels (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

In this "disarmingly amiable reminiscence" (The Atlantic Monthly) that "may be the best argument for the left since Marx" (The New Yorker), poet and writer Lisa Michaels blends memoir with social commentary to tell a remarkable tale of growing up as a child of political activists during the early seventies. Michaels's upbringing was marked by communes, rallies, and road trips; as a young girl she traveled across the country with her mother and stepfather in a customized mail truck, complete with a wood stove, while her father spent two years in jail for his part in an antiwar protest. Raised in a rural California town, Michaels craved conformity, but eventually she came to share many of her parents' long-held values. By a writer of uncommon perception, SPLIT offers "a rare glimpse of a life that embodies a time" (Vogue).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Her father was jailed for antiwar activities, her mother lived temporarily in a commune, she was photographed as a toddler carrying a Vietcong flag--A Counterculture Childhood seems an apt subtitle for Michaels's recollections. But this thoughtful memoir doesn't trade in clichés or facile characterizations as it chronicles the years from Michaels's birth in 1966 through her recent marriage. In some ways, she was like any child of divorce, shuttling between two households and struggling with unacknowledged anger; but she also had to deal with classmates' perceptions of her as a "hippie kid" in rural northern California. Political concerns form the backdrop for a sensitive psychological portrait of growing up--a process similar for all people regardless of their parents' lifestyles. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1969, when poet Michaels was just three, her left-wing radical father was jailed for political protest. Shortly after, her already radicalized mother fully embraced the counterculture spirit, abandoning a teaching career in favor of a life on the road with her daughter and boyfriend. The trio ended up in northern California, where Michaels, her mother and stepfather settled down to a simple life in a small town and an existence permeated by her mother's anti-materialist values. Then after his release from prison, Michaels's father also moved to California, where he and his new wife maintained a strong commitment to social activism and leftist politics even as many contemporaries abandoned 1960s-style idealism for a more comfortable complacency. Michaels's perspective on normative American values is that of a self-conscious outsider, and she has a keen eye for the discrepancies between her parents' lives and those of more conventional peers. But this memoir is less about growing up radical than about how Michaels dealt with experiences common to many members of her generation: negotiating relationships with divorced parents, untangling mixed feelings about stepparents, searching for a sense of vocation. In that respect, her most significant insights stem less from what is unique in Michaels's story than from what is universal. While her discussion of counterculture sensibilities is by and large matter-of-fact and unprovocative, her exploration of the subtleties and complexities of family dynamics is unflinchingly honest and at times, breathtakingly insightful.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st Mariner Books Ed edition (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395957885
• ISBN-13: 978-0395957882
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,033,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Split, January 30, 2000

By 

R. Peterson "International citizen" (Leverett, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Split: A Counterculture Childhood (Paperback)

I heard Lisa Michaels interviewed on NPR a year or so ago and was impressed by the cogency and easy spirit with which she related some of the experiences of her young life.  The child of a pair of counterculture types in the 60s, Michaels carefully takes us on the trail her life has taken as a direct result of her parents and who they were, and who they became.  The picture on the front cover is of a three year old (herself) toting a Vietnamese flag on the National Mall that appeared on the back cover of Life magazine many years ago.  Her stikingly unapologetic tale traverses communes, road trips, political rallies, war protests, and even a jail visit to her father.  She manages to tell us about a fascinating childhood while at the same time careful not to either blame, or explain her parents and their views or lifestyles.   One reviewer puts it best, "...though it would be easy to caricature her sixties childhood or turn her parents into cartoon radicals, ...she does a beautiful job of conjuring up her youth in both its anomalous and ordinary detail."  This is a well-written and thoughtful book and one that leaves the reader with a comfortable view of what life was really like for her and her family during a turbulent time.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you were born in the 60s you should read this book, April 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Split: A Counterculture Childhood (Paperback)

This memoir took me by complete surprise. I have never found a first person account that so perfectly described my own unarticulated feelings about coming of age in the late 60s and the 70s -- the weird feeling that you want to be more like "everyone else" when your parents allow you to do anything. It also shed light on the painful experience of divorce when you're a kid, and how hard it is shuttling between parents and adjusting to their different worlds. Lisa's writing is so spare, thoughtful, and quiet--I love how accepting she is of the paradoxes of her childhood, and her refusal to blame anyone. I look forward to reading any other book she might write.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down., August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Split: A Counterculture Childhood (Hardcover)

Split is a beautifully written memoir. No cheap shots here, no bratty self-absorbed rants against loved ones. Lisa Michaels' life has not been particularly melodramatic thus far; Split is a thoughtful recounting of a colorful, mostly happy childhood and young adulthood. She is the child of a politically radical rather and a very intelligent hippie mother who...split...when she was a baby. This is an intimate portrait of divorce, of living in and sometimes strung between two households, a young girl/woman trying to find her place during personally and nationally tumultuous times. What distinguishes Michaels' book from the pack of ordinary memoirs is her keen memory, her compassion, her courage to tell things as SHE sees them rather than attempting to be the voice of her generation or the didactic parrot of her elders.Michaels has an amazing eye for detail, an excellent command of language, and an impressive ability to spin a yarn. She is witty, too. I have so much confidence in her writing I'd read three hundred pages about her expeditions to the grocery store or what she did for summer vacation; fortunately Split covers far more ground. A good read of particular interest to anyone who came of age in the 60s and 70s, whose parents were left of center, or anyone who is curious about how the young people born of this significant time have fared now that they are old enough to reflect on their own experiences.