Love, Anarchy, & Emma Goldman: A Biography

Candace Falk

Published by Rutgers University Press 2019

Love, Anarchy, & Emma Goldman

A Biography

Candace Falk

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978806498

Overview
Contents

About this book

“What this remarkable book does . . . is to remind us of that passion, that revolutionary fervor, that camaraderie, that persistence in the face of political defeat and personal despair so needed in our time as in theirs.” —Howard Zinn

“Fascinating …With marvelous clarity and depth, Candace Falk illuminates for us an Emma Goldman shaped by her time yet presaging in her life the situation and conflicts of women in our time.” —Tillie Olsen

One of the most famous political activists of all time, Emma Goldman was also infamous for her radical anarchist views and her “scandalous” personal life. In public, Goldman was a firebrand, confidently agitating for labor reform, anarchism, birth control, and women’s independence. But behind closed doors she was more vulnerable, especially when it came to the love of her life.

Love, Anarchy, & Emma Goldman is an account of Goldman’s legendary career as a political activist. But it is more than that—it is a biography that offers an intimate look at how Goldman’s passion for social reform dovetailed with her passion for one man: Chicago activist, hobo king, and red-light district gynecologist Ben Reitman. Candace Falk takes us into the heart of their tumultuous love affair, finding that even as Goldman lectured on free love, she confronted her own intense jealousy.

As director of the Emma Goldman papers, Falk had access to over 40,000 writings by Goldman—including her private letters and notes—and she draws upon these archives to give us a rare insight into this brilliant, complex woman’s thoughts. The result is both a riveting love story and a primer on an exciting, explosive era in American politics and intellectual life.

Author / Editor information

CANDACE FALK is the editor and director of the Emma Goldman Papers, a project of the University of California, Berkeley and of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives. She was awarded the Kanner Prize for the best bibliographical work in Women’s History, as well as a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Reviews

"From a 'lone and woeful childhood,' Goldman took a vision of what might have been. Her ability to transform her memories of oppression and abandonment into an abiding energy on behalf of other victims of injustice and desiring love was her great triumph. The counterpoint between the two romances, private and public, silent and spoken, creates the tension of her life. Candace Falk...draws us into this story that [Goldman] never quite tells - about the relationship between love and anarchy, Goldman's two grand passions. The story contains the anarchist ideal - of a love that overcomes the seeming contradiction between security and freedom - but also the proverbial anarchy of women's love. The 'spirit of revolt' that Goldman defined as the essence of anarchism also marks the love that calls into question on the institutions of war, the inevitability of aggression and the conventions of moral justification. And it expresses the love that was manifest in Goldman extraordinary friendships."

— Carol Gilligan, New York Times

"Fascinating. . . . With marvelous clarity and depth, Candace Falk illuminates for us an Emma Goldman shaped by her time yet presaging in her life the situation and conflicts of women in our time."

— Tillie Olsen

"For public figures, a clash between their inner and outer lives is nearly inevitable. In the case of Emma Goldman, the struggle was epic—and stunningly first brought to light in Candace Falk’s groundbreaking biography."

— Peter Glassgold, editor, Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth

"Recommended."

— Library Journal

"Wherever social and intellectual history is taught instructors will welcome this paperback edition. . . . This is a notable biography of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women."

— Merle Curti

"Love, anarchy, and Emma Goldman," by Candace Falk
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/love-anarchy-and-emma-goldman/

— Open Democracy

"What this remarkable book does . . . is to remind us of that passion, that revolutionary fervor, that camaraderie, that persistence in the face of political defeat and personal despair so needed in our time as in theirs."

— Howard Zinn

New York Times most notable biographies, 1990.

— New York Times Book Review

"To read the sometimes sappy, often moving, ever scandalous love letters of Emma Goldman and her great passion Ben Reitman is to ride the roller coaster of True Romance. Candace Falk renders a valuable service by giving us plain the inside story of this intense ten-year affair."

— Alix Kates Shulman

"When feminists discovered that the personal was political, Goldman became a model, and one whose views seemed strikingly contemporary. While other activists were fighting for the vote, she was championing 'free love,' birth control and independence from those 'internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth,' that stifled women's emancipation....Fascinating."

— The Nation

"The prodigious research informing this book brings readers an intimate and engaging look into the life and loves of Emma Goldman. Falk persuasively explores the brilliant and desperate relation of private loves to political ideals. She gently follows Goldman’s struggle with the long-term consequences of childhood abandonment and loneliness. Courageous, vulnerable, compelling, flawed…the Emma Goldman who emerges in this skilled biographical portrait sometimes disappointed her friends and lovers but never ceased her struggle to be as she longed to be: big and strong and free.'”

— Kathy Ferguson, author of Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets

Topics

General Interest

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface to the Revised Edition Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Postscript to the Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xxiii
Author’s Note Publicly Available Download PDF	xxix
Chapter 1 Something to Hide Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2 The Daughter of a Dream Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
Chapter 3 Love, Like a Mighty Spectre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Chapter 4 Promiscuity and Free Love Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Chapter 5 Addiction to Love Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Chapter 6 Tar and Sagebrush Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Chapter 7 Sons and Mothers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Chapter 8 Denying Finalities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
Chapter 9 Birth Control and “Blood and Iron Militarism” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	172
Chapter 10 “1917—Excruciating Even Now to Write About It” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Chapter 11 “The Last of a Stormy Chapter”—1918–1919 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Chapter 12 Mother Russia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Chapter 13 Blown to the Winds Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Chapter 14 Border Crossings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Chapter 15 Reliving Her Life Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	298
Chapter 16 Blind Faith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	322
Chapter 17 Fatal Endings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	354
Chapter 18 Against an Avalanche Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	377
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	423
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	433
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	467
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	483
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	501

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 549
Illustrations
- Other: 40 B-W photos

eBook

Published: June 7, 2019
ISBN: 9781978806498