Flights: Radicals on the Run

by Joel Whitney

Told through the lives of the American Century’s most talented and stubborn dissidents, Flights is the archetypal hero’s journey of a group of progressives whose struggle for truth, and for freedom from persecution, sent them into exile, both literal and metaphorical.

Wanted for a crime she did not commit, Professor Angela Davis went on the run in 1970, describing the struggle against panic in her nightly safehouse transfers: “Living as a fugitive means resisting hysteria, distinguishing between the creations of a frightened imagination and the real signs that the enemy is near.” In her quest “to elude him, outsmart him,” she recalled, “Thousands of my ancestors had waited, as I had…for nightfall to cover their steps…”

Davis is just one of a rich array of refugees portrayed here by Joel Whitney, all forced to flee homes and/or friends because of their progressive stance. In these pages are compelling profiles of Seymour Hersh, Lorraine Hansberry, Graham Greene, Paul Robeson, Gabriel García Márquez, George & Mary Oppen, Frances Stonor Saunders, Malcolm X, Octavio Paz, Diego Rivera, Angela Davis, Leonard Peltier, N. Scott Momaday, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan guerrilla fighter Everado and his American wife, Jennifer Harbury, Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú, deposed Honduran President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya and murdered Lenca environmentalist Berta Cáceres.

At once a group portrait of these geniuses of creative escape, Flights is also a prehistory (and indictment) of American mass surveillance culminating in Edward Snowden’s revelations, of torture culminating in Abu Ghraib, of censorship culminating in the incarceration of journalist Julian Assange, of fascism culminating in January 6, and of political murder culminating in the Bush-Obama-Trump air assassination program.

Genres: Nonfiction

340 pages, Paperback

Published May 21, 2024

About the author

Joel Whitney is the author of Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers (OR Books) and a cofounder of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics, for which he is a recipient of the 2017 PEN/Nora Magid award for magazine editing. Finks has been called "riveting" (Kirkus), "ingeniously researched..." (Pankaj Mishra in The Guardian's Best of the Year Roundup), “a fascinating mix of political history [and] literary history” (New York Times), “an essential book” (Los Angeles Review of Books) and “a powerful warning” (The New Republic). His essays in Dissent and Salon were Notables in Best American Essays 2015 and 2013. Other work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic and The Paris Review. More here: joelwhitney.net.

Reviews

[Forsov Habit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of like a tasting menu of the experiences of some of the dissidents whose lives were turned upside down by running afoul of the American empire. Without getting mired in excruciating detail, each individual story is presented with just enough flavor to (hopefully, perhaps) inspire the reader to want to dive deeper.

Taken together, the stories weave a suggestive tapestry of the authoritarian and abusive aspects of the American empire, once again, I suspect, with the ambition of inspiring the reader to learn more.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice mix of activists are examined for their struggles and triumphs, from Paul Robeson to Berta Cáceres to Diego Rivera and more. The author has pulled interesting tidbits from these peoples’ lives in short snippets. Purely enjoyable, if not consistent in interest.