| Synopsis: |
In this gritty autobiographical novel (1929) revered writer and activist Agnes Smedley describes her first 33 years, growing up in a mixed-race family on the wrong side of the tracks, teaching at fifteen, going to college at Berkeley, discovering double standards of race, class, and gender there and among East Coast intellectuals, and surviving two tormented marriages. Alice Walker calls it "a precious, priceless book ...a remarkably rare affirmation." The Village Voice notes the 'power' of "erotic heat which informs every page of the book, erotic in the original Greek sense of life force." |