Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Critical Perspectives On The P)

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From Publishers Weekly
Lerner has enjoyed a brilliant academic career, a pioneer who virtually created her own discipline women's history and wrote some of the central texts in the field (such as The Creation of Patriarchy). But she came to scholarship quite late; she was over 40 when she earned her bachelor's degree. Before that she was a refugee, a divorc‚e, the mother of two children, a political activist and a member of the Communist Party. Now in her early 80s, Lerner looks back not on the years of prominence but on those early decades that shaped her thought and made her life's work possible. Born into a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she was imprisoned by the Nazis after the anschluss, narrowly escaping to America and leaving her family behind. Her immediate family survived the Holocaust, but Lerner was never again to see her mother, who died in Europe of multiple sclerosis. The story of her mother's amazing flowering as an artist and tragic death is the emotional heart of the book; its intellectual core is Lerner's account of her political life in the United States. Unlike many ex-Communists who recount their past with guilt and shame, Lerner maintains that, despite the compromises and blindness of those years, the party spoke to what was best in her nature her commitment to social justice and racial equality. The hot-pink blossoms of the fireweed, which can only bloom on burnt-over ground, provide an apt metaphor for this memoir, one certain to find a deserved place in every collection of indispensable works of women's history. 24 b&w illus.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
Past president of the Organization of American Historians and the author of numerous books of history and essays (e.g., Why History Matters), Lerner has produced a grand and beautiful work, well organized and written in clean, lovely prose. Her aim is to examine the life she led prior to her pioneering achievements as a distinguished academic in the field of women's history, a career she entered only after age 40 and years of activism and writing. Born in 1920 into a comfortable Jewish family in Vienna, Lerner was sheltered until 1938, when Germany occupied Austria. With scrupulous scholarship and deep humanity, Lerner details her life as a helpless outsider including her imprisonment and exploitation as a stateless refugee as well as her family relationships and intellectual development. Her accounts of Austria's spontaneous anti-Semitism, her "tiny gestures of defiance," and the loving community she found among feminist scholars and activists are all fascinating; many readers will be particularly intrigued by her description of Hollywood during the blacklist, which deeply affected her film director husband. In a world where accuracy and emotional honesty are often deplorably absent, Fireweed is a rare and valuable contribution. Recommended for all libraries. Elaine Machleder, Bronx, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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