24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Testimonies about a Sweet, but Brief, Dream, May 6, 2002
This review is from: Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture (Paperback)
As a mom who raised two children partially within hippie culture, I am intensely curious about how other kids raised similarly turned out. Wild Child didn't completely sate my curiosity, but it whetted my appetite to go out and read more books on this topic (they're coming fast and furious now).
One funny thing about "being a hippie" is that many of us feel like we weren't *real* enough, compared to, say Wavy Gravy or the Deadheads. Sure, my kids went to alternative schools, witnessed more sex than shrinks would advise, and loved riding around in our beige VW bus, standing on the seats so they could wave to passers-by from the open sunroof. But I only lived communally for three years; I held down a respectable office job; and at one point I even cut my hair.
Wild Child quelled my feelings of being a fraud by showing that there were a lot of different ways to be a hippie. One girl's family traveled back and forth cross-country in a mail truck bought at auction; another spent time working the sugar fields of Belize. About the only thing they all had in common was being embarrassed to reveal the contents of their lunchboxes to classmates-and having a lot of strange people wandering around their homes, whether they lived in a house, bus or teepee.
For me the most powerful piece was the editor's: "Welcome Home," in which she describes attending a latter-day Rainbow Gathering. Having already lived the real thing, the gathering's painstaking efforts to replicate hippie life cannot possibly impress or move her.
Only one contributor is angry about her childhood: she is furious about the omnipresent sexuality she was exposed to almost from infancy. For the most part, though, the contributors enjoyed their childhood and still love and appreciate their parents and what they were trying to do. Interestingly, none of them have chosen to adopt the hippie lifestyle--though many have retained its core values of peace, love, and self-sufficiency.
I recommend Wild Child to anyone with a vested interest in hippiedom-for instance, parents seeking validation for their child-rearing methods. It's also a fine antidote to hippie-bashing, considered sophisticated now even by those who once embraced the lifestyle. The truth is, it was a brilliant and optimistic moment in history. If it didn't transform the world completely, well, it did affect future generations-as Wild Child eloquently testifies.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A unique and important historical perspective., February 21, 2000
This review is from: Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture (Paperback)
This is a deeply felt collection of essays with the single unifying theme of what it was like, for several girls, to be raised by parents that embraced the values and lifestyles of the American counterculture. Most of the essays are episodic, briefly exploring specific experiences. All of them are well written, combining personal histories with an easy narrative flow. I was very moved by one essay in particular -- "Free Love Ain't," by Elizabeth She -- a heartbreakingly honest and brave account of a girl's exposure to the frank sexuality of the free love philosophy of the sixties and seventies. She's description of her experiences and the subsequent psychological repercussions of the free love legacy is a true example of what makes a good memoir. Brava to Chelsea Cain for assembling these stories. The Adult Children of Flower Children have a powerful voice.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Mirror, February 8, 2000
This review is from: Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture (Paperback)
Wild Child is a well written collection of short essays which remind us that the hippie generation cannot be put into a single category. Some were loving, caring parents who found greater meaning in life through simplicity, and an idealistic dream for a better world. Others were abusive, addicted jerks whose parenting was disastrous. But the question remains, how does this differ from any other segment of society?
The suggestion in the synopsis that children raised by hippie parents endured anything more than children of straights simply because they "endured" tofu, communes, nudism and protests, rather than roast beef, suburbs, ruffles and Sunday school is preposterous. As the essays make clear, children are children. They all endure the influences of their parents, and they all rebel. And, if they are lucky, they eventually find their own way. Chelsea Cain does a nice job of pulling together an assortment of writings which provide an excellent mirror for parents of all generations to reflect upon the values they instill, be it through their words or their deeds. This book should be of particular interest to those young adults who thought their parents strange and longed for more convention in their lives. Likewise it should appeal to parents who themselves were part of the hippie generation and struggled to raise their children with values which transcended the dominant American culture.
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