Customer Reviews

When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

...and tell Tobias Wolff the news. This is an astoundingly good memoir, and simply a flat-out great piece of writing. Don't let the subtitle sway you -- this is not a political tract, beyond that fact that in every family there is indoctrination. It's just that in this author's remarkable case, the indoctrination was outwardly about politics, but inwardly about emotional deprivation and the justifications that are created to support it. But far from being bitter or sensational, the book is gripping, wry, unbelievably fine-tuned and emotionally satisfying. SS's insights into his childhood, his outsider status (culturally, politically), his parents...it all rings true, and the author's fate ultimately suggests that there is hope for us all.

If, like me, you tend to discount all one-star reviews as uselessly negative, and all five-star reviews as indiscriminately fawning and inflated, I ask you to consider that in this case the five stars are, in fact, fully deserved.

This is a moving memoir of a childhood deeply-scarred by parental neglect due to a misguided focus on political suffering to the exclusion of all else. The writing is captivating, engaging and amusing, even in the midst of the personal pain caused by the author's mother because of her total devotion to the Socialist Worker's Party to the neglect of the care of her own son, as well as the subjugation of her personal goals and desires to her extreme view of the necessary commitment to the cause of social justice.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh remembers his childhood with surprising compassion for both his mostly-absent Iranian father and his depressed Jewish-American mother, especially given the trauma that was inflicted upon him as a child and as a young man by their chance encounter with, and subsequent devotion to, the Socialist Worker's Party. He poignantly paints a vivid picture of what it is like to grow up as an outsider, of not belonging because of the apparently voluntary extreme deprivation that his mother inflicted upon both herself and him in an effort to identify with the suffering of the masses, of not belonging because of his parents' political idealism and his childhood misperceptions of them, and of not belonging because of his Iranian heritage during the difficult 2 years of the Iranian hostage crisis of the early 1980's.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh tells his story with wit, honesty and insight. This book is highly recommended, and a good read.

Said Sayrafiezadeh's When Skateboards Will Be Free is a painful memoir about a child whose parents were self-absorbed revolutionaries. His book reveals quirky parents whose separate lives revolved around the Socialist Workers Party. He paints a vivid picture of the party's campaigns from the vantage point of a child dragged to meetings, street sales and demonstrations. Most vivid is his take of the SWP's annual summer schools and conventions at Oberlin College, where the party's children roamed the grounds and buildings, stuffed themselves at the all-you-can-eat cafeteria, and watched the rallies where members responded to the promissory speeches with sustained clapping, cheering, feet stomping and big collections.

Like all children, Said desired his parents' love and attempted to incorporate their values even when those were fiercely at odds with the world around them. Like many of us from dysfunctional families, Said could not understand the dynamics that drove his parents and ended up having to raise himself.

As someone who was a member of the SWP during much of this period and who has a walk-on part in his memoir, I find the story deeply moving and profoundly true, although written from the point of view of a child who couldn't understand everything he saw and heard, and gets some parts wrong.

Every child wants the family to be happy together, and for those of us whose families split apart for one reason or another, we didn't want that to happen and, as a result, feel extraordinarily alone. Not only did Said's "Pop" leave when he was a baby, but then his sister, and later his brother became part of another household, of which I was a member. Outside of the wonderful summer days of Oberlin and the kids he played with after school, Said remembers his childhood in gray tones: his life was a series of worries. Would he take the right side? Would he say the right thing?

Would he fail the expectations of his parents? Of course most of us do, in one way or another.

Said's memoir also took my breath away because the adults in his life did not protect him when he needed them to do so. He perceived his parents as campaigning for justice and equality yet failing to nurture him. His memoir shouts: the political is personal too!

Some have expressed doubt that he was sexually molested; as if they simply can't believe that party cadre could do such things. I mentioned that to a woman who's been a socialist almost all her life; she told me that as a child another party's leader molested her. In my case it was a nice next-door neighbor.

Said never became an activist, nor even explored radical politics, as he eventually admits to his girl friend. And although his life choices are different from my own, I could identify with his attempts to emerge out of the increasingly sectarian shadow world of the SWP and find his way into adulthood.

I just finished this well written and sensitive book. Not being qualified to comment on it's literary merits, nevertheless, the story is beautifully and enjoyably told. Many Americans of my generation (I'm 66) will identify with the life struggle to make sense of the world in a strictly sectarian way and the impact that has on a family. He tells the story warts and all. Excellent book.

After reading a terrifically funny and sad short story by the author in The New Yorker, I was prepared to love "When Skateboards Will Be Free." But instead I can only admit to just liking this well written memoir. Promoted as "A Memoir of a Political Childhood," this book is anything but. It focuses squarely on the neglect the author was subjected to at the hands of his deeply flawed parents. His parents, socialist ideologues to the extreme, are blind to the family suffering of their own making, and this makes for infuriating and often unsatisfying reading. More there a few times I had to stop reading this book to ask myself, are there people out there who are really this smart and this stupid all at the same time? Sadly, the answer is probably yes because there's little here that doesn't ring true in the telling. Despite the very deft and economical writing, "When Skateboard Will Be Free" fails to deliver, ultimately, what at least I thirst for in a tell all memoir that focuses on family pain -- a powerful resolution of some sort that shows the evolution of the author from put-upon child to damaged but wise man. Basically, I want to learn something. That doesn't happen here, and as a result, the book seems more whiny than wise at times. In the end, what this book does do, and very well, is add credence to the saying that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

A masterfully-crafted tale of the adventures of a little boy to his adulthood with a remarkably inquisitive soul, magical innocence, and astonishing wisdom. The book reminds me of Antoine de Saint Exupery's Little Prince. Sad, pondering, and naively mystical, the author moves from one planet to another in search of the wondrous unknown. He is dropped out of his planet due not to its small size but to its emptiness, empty of even that which is everybody's birthright--motherly love, or someone to call him father, Dad, or even Sir.
With his sweet, soft and compassionate voice, he hammers on our head to wake up. as Kafka suggests, when he breaks the shield of false promises that his parents built around themselves just to protect them from seeing and feeling the crude reality; when he takes us to the bookshelves and courageously picks up the books, the century-old myths, and shows us the empty pages, and tells us that is why they are not read, that there is nothing in them; when he gently pulls the curtains away to expose another nothingness behind it, the feeble, ignorant, selfish, stingy, and bulling parents who have hid themselves behind a tapestry of alluring designs; when he rips the facade of a castle and finds a fading cardboard with an image of a man instead of a majestic hero, the man whom he doesn't know how to address--Dad? father?--and hits on "guess what!" to substitute for the title he does not have.
But, unlike the Little Prince, he does not give in to despair. He emerges from his journey fresh, alive, hopeful with a bowl of the miracles of life in his hand. He finds the magic not in a promised land but in a simple pair of hands which offer him love and compassion. He is wise enough not turn his back on it and respond to it with a gentle squeeze.
Some time ago, I wrote a longer review of this book elsewhere. The author kindly acknowledged that I have grasped all the major points and nothing is missed, though I'm still wondering if I read this book again would I discover the secret to Said's complicated gentility.
A highly recommended book for all. Delightful to read and soothing to pounder.

This is a powerful memoir on many levels. For me, it functioned as a child's eye view of a certain political type, the type who destroy their humanity in the name of serving humanity. It is told with utter and chilling clarity.
The book is not without its difficulties. If his parents destroyed their humanity in the name of their grouplet, they also weakened their child's sensitivity to the human suffering his parents were supposedly struggling against. Thus, the book opens with the author proudly recalling how he got around his mother's support to the UFW grape boycott, which he seems to have identified with his parent's party. He practically gloats at the apathy of the common people towards the boycott. But given the crushing abuse he suffered as a child in the name of politics, who can blame him?
The author is also disturbingly incurious (to say the least) about his Iranian heritage. (His father was a well-known figure in the Iranian exile community, particularly its left wing.) But, again, given his father's absence in his life, it's hard to fault him.
Also, in all honesty, it should be said that the cult of suffering which afflicted his mother and, to a lesser degree, his father, was not cultivated by the party. Indeed, the party's Iranian exile allies in particular lived a rather opulent existence on the whole.
That being said, the author is to be given the highest praise for having had the strength to have emerged from a youth of imposed emotional and economic deprivation and be able to look back on even its most horrible moments with unflinching clarity. He has not only written a fine book, but performed a valuable service to those who sincerely want to make this world a better place--if they will listen.

As a child, Said Sayrafiezadeh's mother promised him the socialist revolution was coming soon. So why pay $10.99 for that bubblegum-colored skateboard now? WHEN SKATEBOARDS WILL BE FREE is a memoir filled with the childhood frustrations of such unfulfilled promises, balanced with the pleasures of all-you-can-eat buffets at the Socialist Worker Party conventions to which Said "the little revolutionary" is dragged. Never fully understanding why and how he should be deprived off all things his American friends enjoy, young Said just knows he can't eat grapes because Cesar Chavez says not to. That his mother opens their home to strange "comrades" who should not always be viewed as friends. That his absentee father has been arrested in his native Iran for trying to stir up a Socialist revolution there. As a child on a summer trip to Cuba, he doesn't know what questions to ask. But as an adult designing labels for Martha Stewart, he is able to apply a bittersweet perspective to his story, recognizing that - revolution or not - everything in life comes at a cost. And someone always has to pay.

"My father believes that the United States is destined one to day to be engulfed in a socialist revolution," is the first sentence of Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's memoir WHEN SKATEBOARDS WILL BE FREE. It could also be the first and last sentence of Sayrafiezadeh's youth and early adulthood, life defined by his parents' membership in the Socialist Workers Party and their subsequent fanaticism. Like people who are certain the end is near, his parents are certain revolution is near. His father's dedication to this cause leads him to abandon his wife and Sayrafiezadeh to travel as a charismatic, respected speaker; his mother's to isolation and self-imposed poverty.

Given Sayrafiezadeh circumstances, you'd think his book is dour, but it isn't. It's frequently hilarious, especially when he describes regurgitating (as in bringing up UNdigested ideas) his parents' socialist rhetoric in response to situations he knows nothing about, much like people sloughing off a tragedy by saying, "It's God's will." He relates what it's like to go into acting with a name such as his. (His father is Iranian.) More often than not, he is called to audition for the part of a Middle Eastern cab driver or shopkeeper. (As a writer, his name probably works in his favor. And why shouldn't it? After all, I picked up his book because its title intrigued me and because, given his name, I incorrectly assumed it revolved around an Islam based political childhood.)

Men and women who were raised under constricting belief systems surrounding politics, diet, or religion will appreciate Sayrafiezadeh's observations along with how he comes to terms with his parents and his childhood. If readers are looking for a straight chronology of his life, they'll be disappointed. But if they're willing to follow him in his turns of memory, they'll be more than satisfied by this well-written memoir. It's easy flowing and clear style is much like that of GLASS CASTLE.

I don't know how exactly I found this book, but I'm really glad I did. I was very interested in the book when I saw the title and the author. The book was an amazing read for several reasons.

1) I was interested to see if there would be some 9/11 stories and experiences like many Arab and Muslim American writers have started to come out with these days. But, I found a much more interesting story of a young Iranian boy (with little identity tied to Iran) and his experiences during the Iran Hostage crisis. The stories in many ways mirrored the experiences of South Asian and Middle Eastern people in this country today, and it was fascinating to see a very similar story being told decades earlier.

2) The stories of a child of socialists/communists and his interpretations of the party and politics are just extremely well told. There is a reflective innocence to his memoir, and I appreciate how he goes back and forth between his adult analysis and his childhood one without passing extreme judgment on either version.

3) The young character is very easily related to despite his far from normal upbringing. He is a tragic hero, and yet a common man. You route for him to make it in the end, and he does, in his own unique way.