"America's Child, a woman's journey through the radical sixties, a memoir" by Susan Sherman, published by Curbstone Press, 2007
I attended the book launch for Sherman's new memoir at Bluestockings Book Store on Allen Street, below Houston, on November 13th. This is the only woman-run bookstore in Manhattan. The place was packed, they were crammed in the back trying to find a seat.
I am enjoying reading this book very much. Buy this book!!!
From the first page you know you are in the hands of someone who loves words. And Music. America's Child is a memoir, written in prose by an award-winning poet and playwright. Sherman is a master of words. She brings a sense of rhythm to her story. It's like the perfect song, it captures your heart and at the same time opens you to new experiences, full of unexpected visual and other sensory cues. Read what it was like in Sherman's 60's and be prepared to go beyond sex drugs and rock and roll. You will enjoy seeing Sherman's Berkley in the 50's and her introduction to radical politics. Follow her innocence in Cuba and an extraordinary meeting with Fidel Castro. And laugh with her at her FBI file which she recounts with a knowing sense of humour. Most of all, be prepared to ask yourself, how much has changed?
Her own words best illustrate Sherman's love for each and every word.
This is from the first page, before the list of contents:
Always you will live here, close as the blood that flows
through the veins of my had. As I walk into the desert.
Father, mother, country. The dream clutched tight to my
body, like a lover.
The following are excerpts of advanced praise as printed on the back cover:
"So much of this book touches on events of my own life. The friends we made protesting that war -- 'Angry Arts,' The Deux Megots poets' cafe -- might be with us still, the portraits are so vivid. This chronicle reads like an adventure story told with modesty and feeling." Grace Paley
"America's Child enables us to locate, still beating like a heart within the thick-skinned body of the present, the complex, turbulent, light-filled spirit of a season in our history when we endeavored to accelerate the rate at which we traveled from who we were toward who we could become." Chuck Wachtel.
"...a book of interior and exterior voyages, a book of transformations, ..." Claribel Alegria
"....she connects us all to her struggle to find her place in a chaotic decade. Her memoir is a moving, sensitive, and insightful look at both a remarkable time and a woman growing into wisdom."
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