The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 26 February 2001
edited by Chelsea Cain
When I was three, I walked up to a police officer and called him "pig". When I was five, with my mom, I attended a Jimi Hendrix concert. My clothes were homemade, we ate carob-chip cookies and we moved to San Francisco two years late for the Summer of Love. So, it was with recognition that I read this collection of essays assembled by Chelsea Cain, with a wonderful foreword by Moon Unit Zappa. There are fourteen essays, stories, and poems here, all written by women who were raised in "alternative" households in the late 60s and 70s. Their voices are strong, their memories deep and valuable. They all, today, are living in a world that has either moved on or outright rejected many of the ideals their parents shared. Now, it is for them to build upon the successes and failures of their upbringing. The tone of many of these essays is the struggle these women have relating their alternative upbringing to modern mainstream lifestyle. In the darkest example, Elizabeth Shé's "Free Love Ain't", there is a lot of bitterness over her mother's overboard embracing of sexual liberation and its inevitable effects on her daughter. It is powerful and heartbreaking. In other essays, it is the confusion of being raised without TV and eating grainy tofu. It is, indeed, difficult in this day and age to reconcile a counterculture view of the world with its current state. In the later essays printed here, there also emerges a sense of pride and love for what the authors' parents had set out to do. And there is a moving search for echoes of that life today. Despite the many flaws in the counterculture approach to child-rearing (among other things), this was still childhood, with all its gifts and faults. I, for one, look back with confusion, sadness, nostalgia, occasional bitterness, but with some gratitude that who I am came from who my parents were. In this book, that recognition is vivid and sometimes touchingly expressed, but also often with regret. It was hard being so different, and the lack of formal structure left kids lost in the world, sometimes behind their contemporaries, sometimes precociously ahead. This book, perhaps, sets out to show that this may have been more of a problem for girls than boys. Indeed, sexual politics for women were changing much faster than for men. These countercultural parents set out to change the world. Inevitably, they drastically affected their children's world. But, in the end, was this necessarily a failure? We've all come out with a new look at the world around us, and that may be more enriching, despite its troubles. The entire book is compelling, all the works strong. These women speak with a voice partly shaped by the inventive lifestyle of their parents. This is a rewarding record of their lives.
Also by Chelsea Cain: [Dharma Girl]
See also: [Split] & [Pagan Time]