Reading in the Rearview Mirror

[bibliogramma]

In the last couple of years, I've been drawn to picking up memoirs by people who were in the forefront of the social battles of my youth. I've been finding the reading most interesting, because it brings back so much, remembering a time that really was different then in very many ways.

The late 60s in North America (and many other places around the world) were years of such energy, such optimism - the civil rights movement, the young left, second wave feminists, the very beginnings of queer liberation - it was so easy to believe that the world could change.

And it has, but the terrifying thing is that the more things have changed in a way that makes it possible for individual women, people of colour, queer people, other marginalised people, in Western society at least, to have greater freedoms, options and opportunities within society, the more society has become something that is in some ways our worst nightmare.

We won some battles, but did we lose the war?

The books that have started me really thinking about and trying to remember what it has meant to be a social radical and activist for almost 40 years:

Ten Thousand Roses - Judy Rebick
The World Split Open - Ruth Rosen
Tales of the Lavender Menace - Karla Jay
Street-fighting Years - Tariq Ali

I'm of a mind to hunt up some more memoirs, reminiscences and histories by people who were there and in the middle of it all - suggestions and recommendations welcome.