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The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary

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In the early 1970s, as I struggled through my adolescence, James Simon Kunen's "The Strawberry Statement" was one of my favorite books. Part diary, part reflection and part polemic, it allowed me to participate vicariously in the confusion, rage and activism of Columbia's student strikes of the late 1960s.

Kunen was the kind of kid I wanted to be. A nerdy kind of a guy, he participated in anti-establishment student actions at Columbia University. He protested construction projects that supposedly disenfranchised Columbia's neighbors and helped occupy the offices of college officials. He was an activist, though on the fringes, "stickin' it to the man" before the phrase became widely known. Kunen was the poster child for my teen rage against a governmental machine that had my parents' blind support. His writing is genuine and funny, capturing the hydra-headed angst of being a long-haired college kid in 1968. No wonder I liked the book!

Kunen's description of student organizers like Mark Rudd nailed (albeit unconsciously) the leaders of the period as typical politicians, who carefully managed the mob's righteous indignation with their own positioning for future leadership roles. Kunen's description of university officials poignantly captured their vapidity and their befuddlement at being questioned by their under-age charges. The book is a perfectly-posed snapshot of a culture teetering between a passive age of obedient complacency and an emerging age of anti-authoritarian mistrust and challenge.

Thirty years later, I also see some of the narcissistic silliness that defined the 1960s. The war in Vietnam, which presumably fueled protests, is strangely absent from Kunen's writings, giving his musings a tinge of empty-headedness rather than profundity. Marxism, which appealed to a generation of college radicals, seems worn more as a badge of distinctiveness from his parent's unreflective capitalism rather than a lived reality. For all his desire to be different, Kunen is depressingly the same as many post-adolescents, crossing swords with adults who don't take him seriously, missing the big picture while fighting the good fight.

As a way for adolescents to get in touch with their desire for activism, "The Strawberry Statement" is a gem. As a snapshot of being 19 years old in late 1960s - with its half-blind groping toward an unseen and hopefully brighter future-it is priceless.

I first read this book back in the late '70's, when I was in college myself. I strongly sympathized with a lot of the things the author was saying, which seemed just as true then in terms of broad philosophical concerns.

The book is really kind of picaresque, though, and is mostly about the author's days wandering around the Columbia campus during the 'student unrest' of spring 1968. It seems to me now to be an accurate picture of the state of mind (and ego!) an adolescent caught up in the excitement of a hopeful ferment. 20 years later the radicalism looks pretty absurd, and the naivite of a handful of ivory-tower revolutionaries believing that they would somehow remake the country in the face of popular disapproval (Oh yes!) and a complete lack of long range plans and goals, is laughable. Still, there is a lot of crie du couer here, mixed together with teenage truculence.

Kunen was 19 when he wrote the book which would make him 50 now. He was recently a reporter for TIME magazine, and wrote a '97 article that can be looked up at the TIME website about the children of the radicals. He also wrote a follow-up to The Strawberry Statement which I THINK was a TIME article, in '88 I think.

If you find the subject interesting I would strongly recommend RADS by Tom Bates about '60's radicalism in action at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

'One of these days I may fight in earnest and altogether so that I won't have to fight any more.'

Maybe. But probably not.

Easily one of the most readable and personal accounts of the radicalization of American youth in the sixties. I read it when it was first published and it blew me away. I followed Kunen's career on through his work with the Liberation News Service and his life in a New England commune and he did a magnificent job of chronicling our times.

First, I loved this book. Kunen provides a wry and clever portrait of a time that was interesting.... and vastly different from my life in college.... which was at the same school as him (Columbia) and vaguely similar in other ways (rowing). Included in this book which is superficially about the '68 student uprisings at Columbia (due to a want to build a gym in Morningside Park (which was used predominantly by the Harlem's black community...) are also many notes about the coming of age of the books author, who as other reviewers mentioned, went on to be more than a marginal figure in the American left....

It is a shame that this book is out of print. You should be able to order it. Check the auctions on amazon-- that's where I got my copy. It is especially a good book for people going to college (especially Columbia!)

The Strawberry Statement, by James Simon Kunen, is a fabulous book. If you are (or are shopping for) someone who is a little different, so to speak, then this book is a great idea. It chronicles the adventures of the author during the student uprising in 1968 at Columbia University. It also has many of his thoughts about a whole variety of issues. I highly recommend it.

The one book I'll never part with, that's followed me all over the world, through 41 of my 61 years and the 4 continents where I've lived, and is always kept beside my bed, is James Kunen's Strawberry Statement. I reread it every couple of years because it reminds me of who I was, what I believed in, and that I thought we could change the world. It serves me as some sort of moral compass, setting me back on track when I start getting complacent or jaded or just plain lazy.

if you're 19, a college student, or need some perspective, then this book needs to be read and digested. Kunen spits witty comments, gives anecdotes that are just plain hilarious, and while he's doing it, you're just a passive observer trying to wonder what could possibly happen next. a friend from school passed it on to me (the first addition, falling apart of course), and i immediately had to pass it on to a buddy of mine from Hopkins.

Straight forward, well written. I remember when all these events happened, so the book took me back to the day --.
Also provided insights and details that were not available from the news media at the time. I liked author's reporting style. I would read more of his books.

You can get this book cheaper from ebay and you can get it closer to it's historical publishing date from ebay too. The book is about the spirit of college rebellion in the 60s and it seems like a balanced and honest appraisal. It may or may not be fictional, historical fiction, or non-fictional. Any of the three works as it captures the zietgiest of the era without, unlike many of these books, pandering to the children of the 60s.

When I read this book for the first time five years ago, I wondered how I had existed without it. I carry it around with me and quote from it; my copy is falling apart. This book will change your thought process and your whole life.