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Vida by Marge Piercy
Vida is the most important novel yet about the political '60s and '70s; it is at the same time a sensual and moving love story. Vida is full of the pleasures and pains, the experiments, disasters and victories of an extraordinary band of people. At the center of the novel stands Vida Asch. She has lived underground for almost a decade. Back in the '60s she was a political star of the exuberant antiwar movement - a red-haired beauty photographed for the pages of Life magazine - charismatic, passionate and totally sure she would prevail. Now, a decade later, Vida is on the run, her star - quality replaced by stubborn courage. She comes briefly to rest in a safe house on Cape Cod. To her surprise and annoyance, she finds another person in the house, a fugitive, Joel, ten years younger than she, a kid who dropped into the underground out of the army. As they spend the next days together, Vida finds herself warming toward a man for the first time in years, knowing all too well the dangers. As counterpoint to the underground '70s, Marge Piercy tells the extraordinary tale of the optimistic '60s, the thousands of people who were members of SAW (Students Against the War, of course) and of the handful who formed a fierce group called the Little Red Wagon, who make vivid and comprehensible the desperation, the courage and the blind rage of a time when "action" could appear to some to be a more rational choice than the vote. Vida is about courage commitment and persistence. But it is also about the passionate side of politics that so often proves more powerful than rhetoric.
413 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
21 people are currently reading
606 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
113 books924 followersMarge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
November 5, 2017
In the first years of the 2000s I attended a talk by Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn, a well-known leader of the SDS before she went under. She was brilliant, charismatic, inspiring. Like many people my age, coming up in the 1990s, I came to leftist politics through a kind of worship of the 1960s and the movements that came out of that decade. Yet, though I might not have been able to articulate it at the time, there was also a sense of disappointment when all these middle-class yuppies who just loved Bill Clinton went on and on about their Woodstock experience, their time at the anti-war march, that one time they were in a car with an actual Black Panther. Was it really so radical, when the final result of their involvement in the various movements was 'didn't grow up to become a Republican'? Why did most of them still seem to be so uncomfortable around people of different races? Why were they so into the vicious welfare and criminal justice reforms and other neo-liberal policies of the Clinton era? And then, a few years later, why were so many of them frothing at the mouth trying to get America back into endless imperial war? Bernadine Dohrn, in 2004, seemed to represent a different path out of that late 1960s moment. She was the first person who introduced to me the 'other' Martin Luther King Jr, not the watered-down voice of racial unity without redress of wrongs, but the fiery voice against the military industrial complex and the grotesque maldistribution of wealth under capitalism. She was still fighting, in her way.
Dohrn and Bill Ayers turned themselves in in 1980. By the time they came out of hiding, most of the charges against them had to be dropped due to the wildly illegal activities of the FBI, and she did just a short amount of time, later becoming a law professor. Marge Piercy's novel, Vida, a fictional account of a Dohrn-esque woman from a group much like the Weather Underground, was written in 1979, before the sentencing of Dohrn and Ayers, and before the 1981 attempted bank robbery by several WU-affiliated leftists that left three people dead and evaporated much of any remaining goodwill to the fugitive bombers of the far left. Piercy had no way of knowing what was just around the corner when she wrote this novel, but her finger was clearly on the pulse. The times were changing. The times had already changed, quite a lot. Piercy vividly depicts a group of radicals who are slowly coming to realize that they aren't on the vanguard anymore, and that they might actually be in the process of becoming relics. The novel moves deftly between time periods, capturing the increasing fury of the late 1960s anti-war movement, the first heady years of being underground, and the daily stresses of being a long-term fugitive. (Thank god for pay phones).
There's also quite a lot of political conversation between the characters that reads as achingly earnest to me, having read this book in a time when communist memes and twitter snark are primary means of left communication. Oh, for a communiqué free of irony! I was especially moved by the discussions between Vida and her sister Natalie, who found her calling within the women's movement, much to Vida's Marxist-Leninist dismay, since apparently women's issues were bourgeois. (Later, anti-nuke work earns the same moniker, as does basically the entire ecological movement, which really makes these fugitives political dinosaurs for the 21st century reader.) Of course leftist politics have changed deeply in the almost 40 years since Marge Piercy wrote Vida, but she so deftly depicts her characters and their politics, that though we might now fiercely critique certain aspects of their actions or ideology (oh god, so much toxic masculinity on display), we have to reckon with them as real people, trying to find their way in a fucked society and somehow make it better. This is a powerful, necessary lesson, and lucky for us, it comes in the form of a plot-driven and entertaining novel.
Dohrn and Bill Ayers turned themselves in in 1980. By the time they came out of hiding, most of the charges against them had to be dropped due to the wildly illegal activities of the FBI, and she did just a short amount of time, later becoming a law professor. Marge Piercy's novel, Vida, a fictional account of a Dohrn-esque woman from a group much like the Weather Underground, was written in 1979, before the sentencing of Dohrn and Ayers, and before the 1981 attempted bank robbery by several WU-affiliated leftists that left three people dead and evaporated much of any remaining goodwill to the fugitive bombers of the far left. Piercy had no way of knowing what was just around the corner when she wrote this novel, but her finger was clearly on the pulse. The times were changing. The times had already changed, quite a lot. Piercy vividly depicts a group of radicals who are slowly coming to realize that they aren't on the vanguard anymore, and that they might actually be in the process of becoming relics. The novel moves deftly between time periods, capturing the increasing fury of the late 1960s anti-war movement, the first heady years of being underground, and the daily stresses of being a long-term fugitive. (Thank god for pay phones).
There's also quite a lot of political conversation between the characters that reads as achingly earnest to me, having read this book in a time when communist memes and twitter snark are primary means of left communication. Oh, for a communiqué free of irony! I was especially moved by the discussions between Vida and her sister Natalie, who found her calling within the women's movement, much to Vida's Marxist-Leninist dismay, since apparently women's issues were bourgeois. (Later, anti-nuke work earns the same moniker, as does basically the entire ecological movement, which really makes these fugitives political dinosaurs for the 21st century reader.) Of course leftist politics have changed deeply in the almost 40 years since Marge Piercy wrote Vida, but she so deftly depicts her characters and their politics, that though we might now fiercely critique certain aspects of their actions or ideology (oh god, so much toxic masculinity on display), we have to reckon with them as real people, trying to find their way in a fucked society and somehow make it better. This is a powerful, necessary lesson, and lucky for us, it comes in the form of a plot-driven and entertaining novel.
March 7, 2025
A Political Novel of the 1960s
There is so much divisiveness and polarization today in our country. I was in college and graduate school during the 1960's -- 70's and remember the demonstrations, the student protests, the anger, the Vietnam War, the assassinations and more. It troubled me when young, and it troubles me more now.
Marge Piercy is a prolific American poet and novelist who wrote "Vida" (1979) as her sixth novel relatively early in her career. I read and greatly enjoyed a volume of Piercy's poetry, "The Art of Blessing the Day" many years ago., "Vida" was the first of her novels I have read, and I liked it far less.
This is a novel of 1960s radicalism and its aftermath. The primary character is Vida Asch, 37, a leader of the student radicals in the 1960s. Late in the 1960s, the student movement divided with a small splinter group, called the Weathermen, going underground and perpetuating acts of violence. Vida is a leader of this underground or 'Network" and a member of its governing board.
The novel moves back and forth in time, both in its sections and in flashbacks. Some of the sections show the protest movement of the 1960's and Vida's involvement. But the larger part of the book shows Vida's years as a fugitive through about the time the novel was published in the late 1970s. Vida goes underground after a series of bombings. The novel describes the painstaking care she and her comrades must take to avoid detection and arrest. The novel is thickly and realistically textured and shows a committed, difficult, lonely, and claustrophobic life.
The novel shows something of the bombings or "actions" that made Vida a fugitive and that she continues to undertake as most of her generation fades away or moves on to other things. But most of the book is about Vida herself, the places she visits as a fugitive, the way she manages to support herself, her extensive sex and love life, and her love of food and clothes. The book includes many characters all of whom Piercy convincingly describes. The other major characters include a younger man, Joel, who becomes a love interest of Vida early in the novel, and Vida's sister, Natalie, in the middle of getting a divorce. The book and the frame of political interest gradually move from the Vietnam protests through other critiques of social and economic conditions in the United States. It emphasizes how, in the 1970s when the Network was reduced to a dwindling number of fugitives, the Network became the source of a strong feminism, based on the way the male leaders of the Network treated its women members, including Vida. Feminism and sexuality ultimately become a major theme of this book.
The novel is multi-textured and written with great details and powers of observation. Piercy writes with a great deal of sympathy for her characters. The book is dedicated to the "street and alley soldiers" and Piercy describes the work on her webpage as "the most important novel yet written about the political 60's and 70's [and] at the same time a sensual and moving love story."
I was reminded of the 1960's and 70's by Piercy's novel and developed feeling for the characters and their plight. In my view, the author's admiration for her characters and their political commitments was misplaced. I didn't find this admiration supported by the book and I don't share it, beyond the human sympathy for lost, lonely, probably misplaced lives. In my view, Piercy gives 1960s radicalism and its adherents more credit than they deserve. Her novel is indeed about the "political" 60s and 70's and may not appeal to readers without a commitment to the politics of that era. "Vida" is a lengthy book; while I enjoyed it in sections, it did not bring back fond memories of an earlier time or make me wish that the politics of that time had been realized. The book reminded me of large, continued divisions in our beloved country and of the continued and growing need for healing, for shared ideals, and for a renewed spirit of patriotism.
Robin Friedman
There is so much divisiveness and polarization today in our country. I was in college and graduate school during the 1960's -- 70's and remember the demonstrations, the student protests, the anger, the Vietnam War, the assassinations and more. It troubled me when young, and it troubles me more now.
Marge Piercy is a prolific American poet and novelist who wrote "Vida" (1979) as her sixth novel relatively early in her career. I read and greatly enjoyed a volume of Piercy's poetry, "The Art of Blessing the Day" many years ago., "Vida" was the first of her novels I have read, and I liked it far less.
This is a novel of 1960s radicalism and its aftermath. The primary character is Vida Asch, 37, a leader of the student radicals in the 1960s. Late in the 1960s, the student movement divided with a small splinter group, called the Weathermen, going underground and perpetuating acts of violence. Vida is a leader of this underground or 'Network" and a member of its governing board.
The novel moves back and forth in time, both in its sections and in flashbacks. Some of the sections show the protest movement of the 1960's and Vida's involvement. But the larger part of the book shows Vida's years as a fugitive through about the time the novel was published in the late 1970s. Vida goes underground after a series of bombings. The novel describes the painstaking care she and her comrades must take to avoid detection and arrest. The novel is thickly and realistically textured and shows a committed, difficult, lonely, and claustrophobic life.
The novel shows something of the bombings or "actions" that made Vida a fugitive and that she continues to undertake as most of her generation fades away or moves on to other things. But most of the book is about Vida herself, the places she visits as a fugitive, the way she manages to support herself, her extensive sex and love life, and her love of food and clothes. The book includes many characters all of whom Piercy convincingly describes. The other major characters include a younger man, Joel, who becomes a love interest of Vida early in the novel, and Vida's sister, Natalie, in the middle of getting a divorce. The book and the frame of political interest gradually move from the Vietnam protests through other critiques of social and economic conditions in the United States. It emphasizes how, in the 1970s when the Network was reduced to a dwindling number of fugitives, the Network became the source of a strong feminism, based on the way the male leaders of the Network treated its women members, including Vida. Feminism and sexuality ultimately become a major theme of this book.
The novel is multi-textured and written with great details and powers of observation. Piercy writes with a great deal of sympathy for her characters. The book is dedicated to the "street and alley soldiers" and Piercy describes the work on her webpage as "the most important novel yet written about the political 60's and 70's [and] at the same time a sensual and moving love story."
I was reminded of the 1960's and 70's by Piercy's novel and developed feeling for the characters and their plight. In my view, the author's admiration for her characters and their political commitments was misplaced. I didn't find this admiration supported by the book and I don't share it, beyond the human sympathy for lost, lonely, probably misplaced lives. In my view, Piercy gives 1960s radicalism and its adherents more credit than they deserve. Her novel is indeed about the "political" 60s and 70's and may not appeal to readers without a commitment to the politics of that era. "Vida" is a lengthy book; while I enjoyed it in sections, it did not bring back fond memories of an earlier time or make me wish that the politics of that time had been realized. The book reminded me of large, continued divisions in our beloved country and of the continued and growing need for healing, for shared ideals, and for a renewed spirit of patriotism.
Robin Friedman
September 17, 2018
It's a time capsule! This novel contains fictional characters who are based upon living people who made up the militant anti-war group the Weather Underground in the 1960s and 70s. The group was anti-war, anti-capitalism, they hated the wealthy ruling class, etc. In real life the group bombed buildings, and avoided killing people. (They accidentally killed one person during one bombing.) The book introduction attempts to separate this group from the idea of "terrorism." They did not want to injure anyone; they wanted to dismantle corporate greed.
The plot does not run in a linear way. Readers see the protagonist Vida during the "current" day, which was the publication date of 1979, as she lives anonymously without a permanent home. Every day she lives in fear of being apprehended for her subversive destruction that occurred 10 years previously.
While reading, I was guessing at 2 possible endings. Vida may die in a hail of gunfire, in a desperate attempt to flee the "pigs," i.e. police. My second guess is she dies alone, ill, and homeless, because her support network abandons her.
Neither of those happens, I was surprised! So, no, there is no shocking or tragic climax or denouement. . . But in this book's defense, it comes across as realistic! It's possible the author knew these revolutionary "underground" people and cobbled together a story of what went down.
The major theme, aside from how the U S of A is corrupted, cruel, and bloated, is how women are struggling for a place in society. They get caught up in love and trouble. The idea of "Free Love" was all nonsense, where men did pretty much whatever they wanted, and the women received the guilt, housekeeping duties, and babies.
The plot does not run in a linear way. Readers see the protagonist Vida during the "current" day, which was the publication date of 1979, as she lives anonymously without a permanent home. Every day she lives in fear of being apprehended for her subversive destruction that occurred 10 years previously.
While reading, I was guessing at 2 possible endings. Vida may die in a hail of gunfire, in a desperate attempt to flee the "pigs," i.e. police. My second guess is she dies alone, ill, and homeless, because her support network abandons her.
Neither of those happens, I was surprised! So, no, there is no shocking or tragic climax or denouement. . . But in this book's defense, it comes across as realistic! It's possible the author knew these revolutionary "underground" people and cobbled together a story of what went down.
The major theme, aside from how the U S of A is corrupted, cruel, and bloated, is how women are struggling for a place in society. They get caught up in love and trouble. The idea of "Free Love" was all nonsense, where men did pretty much whatever they wanted, and the women received the guilt, housekeeping duties, and babies.
March 14, 2021
Marge Piercy has been somewhat of a hit and miss author for me. I simply adored her 1970 novel, Dance the Eagle to Sleep, but was so-so on what I know is her big hit, Woman on the Edge of Time. Originally published in 1979, Vida is the story of Vida Asch as she starts to hit middle age and racks up nearly a decade on the run from the authorities for her role in a group of student radicals turned urban guerrillas, who bombed corporate headquarters and army recruitment centres in the early 1970s. As members of her network are plucked off one by one by the police and the political tide well and truly turns against her, not only is her life a harsh day to day struggle to avoid capture.,she has to contend with an existential crisis in her beliefs. Vida, like everything I have read of Piercy’s is beautifully written. But what really brought this story to life for me is how eerily similar aspects of the student radical milieu she depicts are to the one I experienced in 1980s Melbourne. I actually found my edition of Vida, with this visually amazing cover (released by my publisher PM Press), in a box of books left by a roadside. In the words of the late Abbie Hoffman, ‘steal this book’.
July 18, 2012
Maybe it's because I didn't choose the life of a radical revolutionary that I often find myself fascinated by narratives with such figures--particularly women who not only think "fuck the man" but make bombs. Which is not to say that I have or ever wanted to make bombs.
If you allow yourself to go deep enough into Piercy's narrative about Vida, you can certainly become just as paranoid as Vida about who may be listening to or watching you. In fact, Vida's family, friends and lovers must remember NOT to call her Vida. They can call her Peregrine, Vinny, or one of her other code names, Vida, needless to say, is on the run: forced to go underground after one of the original members of "the Network," an anti-war Leninist-Marxist group of radicals that Vida becomes apart of in the 60s, turns out to be a police informer.
But this novel isn't just about Vida's activities as a revolutionary, it's also a convoluted love story as Vida encounters old and new lovers. Indeed how do such things as intimacy and sex contribute to the revolution? Such a question emphasizes the way in which the body, one's material presence, intersects with politics, the economy, the government, the military . . .
The narrative alternates between the past (late 1960s) and present (early 1980s), ending on an abrupt and fairly negative note about the effectiveness and sustainability of radical, revolutionary endeavors (which actually worked for me instead of befuddling or disappointing me--maybe because I am the cynical academic type that the book occasionally pokes fun at). I
appreciate Piercy's ability to construct complex and convincing characters as well as her meticulous attention to historical and social detail. Yet, I probably wouldn't recommend this fairly long book to anyone who wasn't particularly interested in the political and feminist landscape of the US in the 1960s or who, like me, can't get enough of reading about women on the run from the law and who blow shit up.
As a side note, I think this book could be interestingly and rewardingly compared to Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist (about a British Leninist-Marxist female radical in the 1980s).
If you allow yourself to go deep enough into Piercy's narrative about Vida, you can certainly become just as paranoid as Vida about who may be listening to or watching you. In fact, Vida's family, friends and lovers must remember NOT to call her Vida. They can call her Peregrine, Vinny, or one of her other code names, Vida, needless to say, is on the run: forced to go underground after one of the original members of "the Network," an anti-war Leninist-Marxist group of radicals that Vida becomes apart of in the 60s, turns out to be a police informer.
But this novel isn't just about Vida's activities as a revolutionary, it's also a convoluted love story as Vida encounters old and new lovers. Indeed how do such things as intimacy and sex contribute to the revolution? Such a question emphasizes the way in which the body, one's material presence, intersects with politics, the economy, the government, the military . . .
The narrative alternates between the past (late 1960s) and present (early 1980s), ending on an abrupt and fairly negative note about the effectiveness and sustainability of radical, revolutionary endeavors (which actually worked for me instead of befuddling or disappointing me--maybe because I am the cynical academic type that the book occasionally pokes fun at). I
appreciate Piercy's ability to construct complex and convincing characters as well as her meticulous attention to historical and social detail. Yet, I probably wouldn't recommend this fairly long book to anyone who wasn't particularly interested in the political and feminist landscape of the US in the 1960s or who, like me, can't get enough of reading about women on the run from the law and who blow shit up.
As a side note, I think this book could be interestingly and rewardingly compared to Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist (about a British Leninist-Marxist female radical in the 1980s).
August 19, 2012
I adored this book. Marge Piercy has captured the lives of those involved with politics in the sixties, including tough dialogs which confront the ideology of "free love" and "community" in practice.
"'But he's miserable,' Jimmy had said. 'Under it all, it hurts him. Why can't you make it up?'
'No!' she had said to Jimmy. 'I don't want him that way.'
'For the group,' Jimmy Pleaded.
'I am not a thing to be given to him to keep him happy. I will not fuck him for political reasons.' Her bluntness had shut Jimmy up."
The entanglement of family, love, life and "life underground" are brought to the front of this novel. Piercy evocatively captures the difficulty of living on the outside of culture expectations.
"'But he's miserable,' Jimmy had said. 'Under it all, it hurts him. Why can't you make it up?'
'No!' she had said to Jimmy. 'I don't want him that way.'
'For the group,' Jimmy Pleaded.
'I am not a thing to be given to him to keep him happy. I will not fuck him for political reasons.' Her bluntness had shut Jimmy up."
The entanglement of family, love, life and "life underground" are brought to the front of this novel. Piercy evocatively captures the difficulty of living on the outside of culture expectations.
April 28, 2012
Prior to reading this, I had read mostly Piercy's science fiction, which is excellent. This is a story set in the 70s of a 60s radical on the run. Her politics. her lovers both male and female. Her struggles. Her hopes. Her running from the law. An adrenaline high that pauses every once in a while for hot sex. A feminist statement. A radical tribute to those who fought authority. Very sympathetic characters. Good stuff.
September 1, 2013
Not one of my favourite Piercy novels, but a good read nonetheless. Two things I didn't really like: all the characters speak the same way, if I don't pay close attention to who is supposed to be talking then I wouldn't be able to guess from their manner of speaking, as there are almost no characteristic quirks or mannerisms (except for Natalie's occasional 'shvesterlein'); and I didn't buy Vida's love for Joel. Maybe it's because I found it thoroughly incomprehensible why a strong, sensible woman like Vida would fall for a whiny, passive-aggressive boy whose idea of love is to control her with jealousy.
March 2, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The characters feel so real, and even though some some of their actions and mannerisms infuriated me, that made them real. The ending was somewhat abrupt, but there was some big picture broadening. I think part of Piercy's style is to keep your mind invested through to the end, so she leaves some unraveled ends to keep the theme percolating.
In today's political climate, I could easily situate Vida. It made me cringe at points, but it also inspired me. Definitely worth reading if you want to satisfy your Resistance urge but also want to be entertained by a story.
In today's political climate, I could easily situate Vida. It made me cringe at points, but it also inspired me. Definitely worth reading if you want to satisfy your Resistance urge but also want to be entertained by a story.
January 17, 2009
Read this long long ago, the tension and seriousness in it was more than even I liked. .. Curious now again though.
And though, thinking back, I think one conclusion I drew from this regarding my own life is that I didn't want to be politically active in these ways to these extents, with these results. I certainly wouldn't want to try and raise a kid with having had all of that.. tails unmanageable. So in that way, it was a good life-choice-exploration book for me. Now, this is still without having read it in 20 years, so my memory might be faulty..
And though, thinking back, I think one conclusion I drew from this regarding my own life is that I didn't want to be politically active in these ways to these extents, with these results. I certainly wouldn't want to try and raise a kid with having had all of that.. tails unmanageable. So in that way, it was a good life-choice-exploration book for me. Now, this is still without having read it in 20 years, so my memory might be faulty..
January 26, 2016
Interesting novel about a woman who has been living underground for years to avoid the attention of the authorities after being identified as a member of a radical terrorist group. Captures a sense of the struggles, not only of people trying to make a difference politically, but of fugitives from justice and the homeless. Clearly based to some extent on the plight of the fugitive Weathermen.
July 4, 2018
A rambling saga of one woman’s experience in the radical underground of the 60s and 70s. Lots of sex, jerk guys and car trips. Not as much music, drugs and art in this scene. She’s a militant but the book selves into her brain and her human petty thoughts. The one I read has a great cover not shown on good reads. ‘She’s beautiful when she’s angry’
January 13, 2012
With M.F. Beal's Amazon One, this is the best account of women in the Weather Underground produced while the group was still active. I'm glad PM's getting it back in circulation.
April 12, 2008
This book is a roller-coaster ride of emotions both within the story itself and reflecting likewise in this reader. I'm just shy of two-thirds of the way through it and recently passed the May 4, 1970 event at Kent State as seen through the filter of this band of characters who are among the activists of that era -- the late sixties and early seventies. I am being reminded of The Golden Notebook also as comparisons seem to arise readily enough. This is a Piercy offering which I had somehow missed previously and I'm enjoying it a great deal in spite of the emotional toll it demands at intervals.
Wow. Another huge serendipitous reading experience from Piercy. Powerful and disturbing and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same instant. This one pulled me every which way as I said already and I'm still trying to figure out what was going on that it had such an effect as it had. I think partially because I was of the era but outside that aspect of the population though certainly of the age group. I watched and listened and held outside taking part. Do I feel guilty for having done so because I straddle the line between supporting the beliefs and feeling those beliefs went too far and go too far even in today's political realm? Or do I feel disturbed and angry as I hold those who mirror Piercy's characters accountable for the young lives lost in actions such as Kent State equally with the governmental stances of the time? Am I unsettled yet/yet again at the idea that the slain students could have been my husband's younger brother who did walk past the demonstrations that day on his way to class or the young girls who had come into the dorm a few short years before as I was on my way out into the world and who were for a while under my wing -- sort of a "big sis" to welcome them to campus? I think it's a bit of all that -- but though I end the book with as mixed a bunch of emotions as I read it -- I find a new note of compassion and understanding and sadness for those who lived that underground life due to their activities in those years. And I find myself wondering what, if anything, did we really learn from that time in our history? I look at the waste of young lives in Iraq -- and I'm speaking of all the young lives, not just those of American young people. This book reverbrated like a Chinese gong inside my being, can you tell?
Wow. Another huge serendipitous reading experience from Piercy. Powerful and disturbing and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same instant. This one pulled me every which way as I said already and I'm still trying to figure out what was going on that it had such an effect as it had. I think partially because I was of the era but outside that aspect of the population though certainly of the age group. I watched and listened and held outside taking part. Do I feel guilty for having done so because I straddle the line between supporting the beliefs and feeling those beliefs went too far and go too far even in today's political realm? Or do I feel disturbed and angry as I hold those who mirror Piercy's characters accountable for the young lives lost in actions such as Kent State equally with the governmental stances of the time? Am I unsettled yet/yet again at the idea that the slain students could have been my husband's younger brother who did walk past the demonstrations that day on his way to class or the young girls who had come into the dorm a few short years before as I was on my way out into the world and who were for a while under my wing -- sort of a "big sis" to welcome them to campus? I think it's a bit of all that -- but though I end the book with as mixed a bunch of emotions as I read it -- I find a new note of compassion and understanding and sadness for those who lived that underground life due to their activities in those years. And I find myself wondering what, if anything, did we really learn from that time in our history? I look at the waste of young lives in Iraq -- and I'm speaking of all the young lives, not just those of American young people. This book reverbrated like a Chinese gong inside my being, can you tell?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 22, 2018
Vida is probably the kind of thing where either you're going to be able to get* it or you're not.
I got it, but I'm not sure if I liked reading this book. I know I don't think it's especially well-written**, but nonetheless I am fascinated by it, particularly with regard to how Piercy chooses to convey (or not convey) the characters' political stances and that the book was written and published prior to the 1981 Brink's robbery.
People to whom I would recommend this book:
- Anyone who has survived a claustrophobic fringe lefty activist/social scene where everybody sleeps with everybody and from which you will immediately be cast out if you toe the ideological line by suggesting that maybe misogyny isn't a bourgeois issue or whatever.
- Anyone who has survived an activist scene in where people spend more time arguing about terminology and creating internal documents than anything else.
- Anyone who has known people who go around repeating verbatim talking points from the last Leftbook post/zine/whatever they read two minutes ago. Or if you've ever believed a political something and not known why you believed it.
- People who like stories about sisters and sisterhood.
- People who are interested in tracking depictions of homosexuality/bisexuality through time.
- Aspiring screenwriters! I feel like Vida would really shine in a television adaptation with an ensemble cast.
* as in, understand on an intimate level
**There are, like, five questionable sex scenes within the first fifty pages; thankfully they're less frequent after that.
I got it, but I'm not sure if I liked reading this book. I know I don't think it's especially well-written**, but nonetheless I am fascinated by it, particularly with regard to how Piercy chooses to convey (or not convey) the characters' political stances and that the book was written and published prior to the 1981 Brink's robbery.
People to whom I would recommend this book:
- Anyone who has survived a claustrophobic fringe lefty activist/social scene where everybody sleeps with everybody and from which you will immediately be cast out if you toe the ideological line by suggesting that maybe misogyny isn't a bourgeois issue or whatever.
- Anyone who has survived an activist scene in where people spend more time arguing about terminology and creating internal documents than anything else.
- Anyone who has known people who go around repeating verbatim talking points from the last Leftbook post/zine/whatever they read two minutes ago. Or if you've ever believed a political something and not known why you believed it.
- People who like stories about sisters and sisterhood.
- People who are interested in tracking depictions of homosexuality/bisexuality through time.
- Aspiring screenwriters! I feel like Vida would really shine in a television adaptation with an ensemble cast.
* as in, understand on an intimate level
**There are, like, five questionable sex scenes within the first fifty pages; thankfully they're less frequent after that.
October 24, 2016
I said something to my mum the other day, something along the lines of "By golly what a capitalist feministical oppressive society we live in". Wasn't my best line. However it caused my mum to immediately get into her room and a book. That book was Vida. She said that it was time that I read this, so I guess I have now passed some sort of rite of passage.
The book was alright. Much like the woman of the time who refused to be put into boxes so does the book itself. I had trouble classifying it but landed on it being a cross between a crime novel and a political novel. I had no idea. I internally groaned while reading the first page thinking the characters where highly stereotypical, but they weren't. The book grew on me, and 2 pages from the end I found myself realising that crap I won't know how it all ends, what happens in the future. I thought I could just keep on reading till infinity....
Hope you have a nice activistical day.
The book was alright. Much like the woman of the time who refused to be put into boxes so does the book itself. I had trouble classifying it but landed on it being a cross between a crime novel and a political novel. I had no idea. I internally groaned while reading the first page thinking the characters where highly stereotypical, but they weren't. The book grew on me, and 2 pages from the end I found myself realising that crap I won't know how it all ends, what happens in the future. I thought I could just keep on reading till infinity....
Hope you have a nice activistical day.
October 11, 2013
I loved this book. It was an emotional rollercoaster and the Marxism-Leninism and misogyny of many of the characters was infuriating and it was such an intense picture of life in clandestinity. Goddamn this book is so good.
September 30, 2008
I didn't finish this one as I got super bored with the whole 60's activist thing.
November 6, 2022
As a student witnessed the upheavals in urban Detroit in the Sixties and then was on one of the most radical campuses (one where the author also spent time) I was fully exposed to the philosophy and personalities behind the Radical movement, including being invited to an SDS meeting that was to end in an orgy (which I realized at the time was a way to draw the inexperienced into a reset of morals and ideas--and to which I said, uh, no thanks. Women usually pay too high a price for that foolishness.) The author and I must have crossed paths many many times but we never met--she was not only a student earlier than my years, at the same school, but later, resident artist where I lived on campus. So I have sympathy for the main character Vida and understand her from the aspect of radicals of the times who fled from safe house to safe house to avoid the authorities. I could believe that over years, she would, as the novel unfolds, develop a lifestyle of distrust and homeless couch-surfing to survive; the enemies in power have long memories and a thirst for revenge.
In fact, in a way the main character Vida IS Marge Piercy, had she chosen a political career rather than a literary one, and the love interest Joel, 10 years younger than Vida is modeled on the author's own much younger husband in real life. Joel awakens the sensual, loving side of Vida, who distrusts everyone and everything and has taken that distrust to a career level while the radical movment moves along into new directions. Vida writes papers no one reads, past comrades settle down, her husband is making a child with another woman. Vida is devoted to her radical life but is now, pretty much obsolete, trapped by her own shrewdness in evading arrest for violent acts in a revolution that failed--or has changed beyond her recognition and she has stayed in the box she built instead of growing.
At the end, she is trapped by her own fixity of identity as a fugitive revolutionary, and it is one of the saddest and most physical passages of writing I've ever experienced. Her lover is in danger, and sensing the danger to herself, she is literally unable to move toward him. The aroma of a bag of garlic bagels she is bringing to a doomed breakfast, symbolizes the allure amd beckoning of living now and for today and leaving the past behind. But Vida's legs are fixed to the pavement by some magnetic force, and she tosses the bag away-- defeated by the faults of her virtues, which no longer serve her or any revolution. I had to re-read the end chapter five times in a row to admire the writing.
I have this up there as one of my three favorite Piercy novels, of course "Woman on the Edge of Time" is a masterpiece, "He, She and It" is a dystopian view that shakes you, and this novel, the story of the end of a revolution and one character's inability to evolve, is a tragedy. I put Piercy up there with the best American novelists and her work I think will endure for its originality and skill. She is perhaps now known more for her poetry--and poetry has a way of enduring centuries, so I have no fear her work will be forgotten.
In fact, in a way the main character Vida IS Marge Piercy, had she chosen a political career rather than a literary one, and the love interest Joel, 10 years younger than Vida is modeled on the author's own much younger husband in real life. Joel awakens the sensual, loving side of Vida, who distrusts everyone and everything and has taken that distrust to a career level while the radical movment moves along into new directions. Vida writes papers no one reads, past comrades settle down, her husband is making a child with another woman. Vida is devoted to her radical life but is now, pretty much obsolete, trapped by her own shrewdness in evading arrest for violent acts in a revolution that failed--or has changed beyond her recognition and she has stayed in the box she built instead of growing.
At the end, she is trapped by her own fixity of identity as a fugitive revolutionary, and it is one of the saddest and most physical passages of writing I've ever experienced. Her lover is in danger, and sensing the danger to herself, she is literally unable to move toward him. The aroma of a bag of garlic bagels she is bringing to a doomed breakfast, symbolizes the allure amd beckoning of living now and for today and leaving the past behind. But Vida's legs are fixed to the pavement by some magnetic force, and she tosses the bag away-- defeated by the faults of her virtues, which no longer serve her or any revolution. I had to re-read the end chapter five times in a row to admire the writing.
I have this up there as one of my three favorite Piercy novels, of course "Woman on the Edge of Time" is a masterpiece, "He, She and It" is a dystopian view that shakes you, and this novel, the story of the end of a revolution and one character's inability to evolve, is a tragedy. I put Piercy up there with the best American novelists and her work I think will endure for its originality and skill. She is perhaps now known more for her poetry--and poetry has a way of enduring centuries, so I have no fear her work will be forgotten.
July 5, 2020
i started out not loving this book. i mentioned that to my sister who had loaned it to me. my 6-year old nephew overheard me and asked me why. he said it is important, instead of just disagreeing, to ask why. i realized i didn't have a good answer. in part, i think i didn't like vida, and i was annoyed that i had to spend so much time with her. i think there was also something missing from the editing. what i mean is that, at times, sentences or paragraphs seemed out of place, disrupting the flow of reading. every other page, there was something written in a way which confused me, and it made me pause and lose the train of the story. often it was dialogue, sentences said in a way that didn't flow. one one occasion, after pages of ice and snow there are ripening tomatoes, all stuff i think a good editor would have caught.
but as i progressed through the book and started piecing together the narrative, all the interconnectedness of the characters, i started liking it more. by the end of the book, i was sad it was over and wanted more.
there were a few characters who i never had a sense of. i forget who jimmy is, for instance. he never stuck out to me, and blended in with all the others. and i wish i knew his story, knew how/why he and belinda were killed. but i was surprised by the depth of the characters and their transformation over decades. i came to feel for roger and natalie. i related to leigh and his desire for a stable home life. in fact, i totally related to the idealism, turned to jadedness? turned to a desire for stability and self-preservation in the whole community. it felt really close to home in a lot of ways, and i was impressed with the complexity and humanity with which marge piercy described the trajectory of a whole movement, a whole generation (?)
i also appreciate the moral ambiguity. while i never liked kevin and wanted to kick him in the shins, and while i found leigh and even vida horribly sexist, i got a sense of the culture they were operating in, and instead of feeling judgemental i could see them as part of a complicated history, one with no clear rights or wrongs. i am too young to have been a part of this specific antiwar movement, but as someone who has been involved with various activist movements, i think the depiction is beautifully accurate in all its complexities.
but as i progressed through the book and started piecing together the narrative, all the interconnectedness of the characters, i started liking it more. by the end of the book, i was sad it was over and wanted more.
there were a few characters who i never had a sense of. i forget who jimmy is, for instance. he never stuck out to me, and blended in with all the others. and i wish i knew his story, knew how/why he and belinda were killed. but i was surprised by the depth of the characters and their transformation over decades. i came to feel for roger and natalie. i related to leigh and his desire for a stable home life. in fact, i totally related to the idealism, turned to jadedness? turned to a desire for stability and self-preservation in the whole community. it felt really close to home in a lot of ways, and i was impressed with the complexity and humanity with which marge piercy described the trajectory of a whole movement, a whole generation (?)
i also appreciate the moral ambiguity. while i never liked kevin and wanted to kick him in the shins, and while i found leigh and even vida horribly sexist, i got a sense of the culture they were operating in, and instead of feeling judgemental i could see them as part of a complicated history, one with no clear rights or wrongs. i am too young to have been a part of this specific antiwar movement, but as someone who has been involved with various activist movements, i think the depiction is beautifully accurate in all its complexities.
April 2, 2018
"'He looks mean,' she said stubbornly. 'He marches into the kitchen like he owns it and pulls out half the refrigerator. Then he helps himself and leaves it for me to clean up.'
'Kevin's a real radical, down to his toes,' Leigh said, taking the male side at once. 'Good instinctive hatred of capitalism. He knows where and how he's been oppressed.'
'And he plans to oppress Lohania and me as much as he can.'
'You don't like working-class men, you know that? Only intellectuals like me.'"
[...]
"As she put the beer away, only the photographs remained on the table. She rifled them briefly. Aaesthetic poses of the picturesque Third World. How would you like it, Karen baby, if some photographer from Kenya marched into your kitchen and your bathroom and snapped photos of you at your colorful native pursuits? American woman wearing hair dryer. American women at appendage coloring rite. American man shortening grass in ritual area."
[...]
"Her hands were red and chapped, scarred, discolored, a map of farm labor learned at it was awkwardly done. Plowing, sowing: once these had borne metaphors. Separate the wheat from the chaff, the little left idea mongers quoted who had never seen a sheaf of wheat in their lives, let alone been presented, as the women had, with a fifty-pound sack of hard red winter wheat berries Bill had won in a poker game and the injunction to make bread of them."
Marge Piercy writes brilliantly. I found this novel slightly harder to enjoy than her City of Lights, City of Darkness or Sex Wars. Possibly this is just because the more recent time period makes its issues hit closer to home. The main characters are a group of leftists in hiding to escape punishment for their 1960s anti-Vietnam War bombings. With the end of that war, the relevance of their actions is in question. Vida's sister Nathalie, who never went underground represents a different set of choices: Nathalie always saw the oppression of women (including within the extreme left) as a crucial challenge. While Vida must devote her physical and mental energy to hiding from the FBI, Nathalie remains free to help battered women flee their husbands. The book is intense, page-turning, and leaves plenty of open questions to ponder.
'Kevin's a real radical, down to his toes,' Leigh said, taking the male side at once. 'Good instinctive hatred of capitalism. He knows where and how he's been oppressed.'
'And he plans to oppress Lohania and me as much as he can.'
'You don't like working-class men, you know that? Only intellectuals like me.'"
[...]
"As she put the beer away, only the photographs remained on the table. She rifled them briefly. Aaesthetic poses of the picturesque Third World. How would you like it, Karen baby, if some photographer from Kenya marched into your kitchen and your bathroom and snapped photos of you at your colorful native pursuits? American woman wearing hair dryer. American women at appendage coloring rite. American man shortening grass in ritual area."
[...]
"Her hands were red and chapped, scarred, discolored, a map of farm labor learned at it was awkwardly done. Plowing, sowing: once these had borne metaphors. Separate the wheat from the chaff, the little left idea mongers quoted who had never seen a sheaf of wheat in their lives, let alone been presented, as the women had, with a fifty-pound sack of hard red winter wheat berries Bill had won in a poker game and the injunction to make bread of them."
Marge Piercy writes brilliantly. I found this novel slightly harder to enjoy than her City of Lights, City of Darkness or Sex Wars. Possibly this is just because the more recent time period makes its issues hit closer to home. The main characters are a group of leftists in hiding to escape punishment for their 1960s anti-Vietnam War bombings. With the end of that war, the relevance of their actions is in question. Vida's sister Nathalie, who never went underground represents a different set of choices: Nathalie always saw the oppression of women (including within the extreme left) as a crucial challenge. While Vida must devote her physical and mental energy to hiding from the FBI, Nathalie remains free to help battered women flee their husbands. The book is intense, page-turning, and leaves plenty of open questions to ponder.
July 23, 2024
Just reread this. Last time I read it was in the 1980s. The passage of time gives me a new view of it.
Vida is a 1960s activist, still on the run from the authorities. The book details the events then and now.
What strikes me most now is how horrible the men are. Whiney or violent, revolting. And the women cling to them. The lesbian relationships are all swoony lavender and silk daydreams. Yeah realistic, I do not think.
The second thing is: You can't plant a bomb and be sure no one will be hurt. Ever. It's horrifying anyone should think so.
And the "redemption" of one character involves gun running for the IRA. Oh God, how that stinks of "Oirish" Yanks. Sure and begorrah, de brave darling boys of the RA! They need to Google the Warrington bombing - a bomb in a shopping centre the day before Mother's Day, which killed a small boy. And they need to be thankful the Native Americans never rose up against white Yanks as violently as the IRA did against people in England.
Also the whole arse-ache of the Marx-speak, of cadre and committees! Their whole lives seem a total waste of time.
I didn't realise how angry the book made me till I came to write this. Maybe partly because I, as someone with Irish ancestors, could have been killed by bombs funded by Yanks who think Braveheart was a documentary. "The Brits" are a long way away hahaha kill them.
It was a compelling read. About a woman trapped in a pointless and toxic cult, who can't escape. I feel I am supposed to admire her. I do not.
Vida is a 1960s activist, still on the run from the authorities. The book details the events then and now.
What strikes me most now is how horrible the men are. Whiney or violent, revolting. And the women cling to them. The lesbian relationships are all swoony lavender and silk daydreams. Yeah realistic, I do not think.
The second thing is: You can't plant a bomb and be sure no one will be hurt. Ever. It's horrifying anyone should think so.
And the "redemption" of one character involves gun running for the IRA. Oh God, how that stinks of "Oirish" Yanks. Sure and begorrah, de brave darling boys of the RA! They need to Google the Warrington bombing - a bomb in a shopping centre the day before Mother's Day, which killed a small boy. And they need to be thankful the Native Americans never rose up against white Yanks as violently as the IRA did against people in England.
Also the whole arse-ache of the Marx-speak, of cadre and committees! Their whole lives seem a total waste of time.
I didn't realise how angry the book made me till I came to write this. Maybe partly because I, as someone with Irish ancestors, could have been killed by bombs funded by Yanks who think Braveheart was a documentary. "The Brits" are a long way away hahaha kill them.
It was a compelling read. About a woman trapped in a pointless and toxic cult, who can't escape. I feel I am supposed to admire her. I do not.
May 14, 2024
i truly wished that i enjoyed this book more because i absolutely love marge piercy but this one didn’t sit as easily with me. i think her science fiction is what i prefer more. it felt especially salient to read this right now considering the uptick of political action on college campuses with encampments which feels very reminiscent of the earlier 60s SAW protests shown here. overall i really enjoyed the earlier timeline and didn’t especially like the later one. that was honestly my biggest issue, is that it was just oh so realistic. i have no problem with straightforward or realistic storytelling but it was nearly banal for me and i kept getting confused by jargon. furthermore i didn’t care for a single man (except for pelican because that’s a killer name) and especially despised joel? the beauty of the character building was with the relationships centering women such as with natalie, lohania, and eva. overall this book could work for someone but i’m not the one.
April 25, 2023
I found myself slogging through the second half of this overlong novel based on revolutionary history in America in the !960s and '70s, sometimes wandering into the 80s.
However, Piercy captures the idealism, demand for change, liaisons of various types, need to hide in clear sight, gender issues, educational goals, and utter hatred of the Vietnam War and the governments that lied and kept it going from Kennedy through Nixon.
While I was not active in the ways of the novel's characters, I did help friends escape to Canada, hosted a few who were active, and tried as a young teacher to educate my students fairly.
Piercy's book returns me to those decades of my youth.
This was a worthwhile return for me, albeit an often confusing one given Piercy's technique and the huge number of characters.
However, Piercy captures the idealism, demand for change, liaisons of various types, need to hide in clear sight, gender issues, educational goals, and utter hatred of the Vietnam War and the governments that lied and kept it going from Kennedy through Nixon.
While I was not active in the ways of the novel's characters, I did help friends escape to Canada, hosted a few who were active, and tried as a young teacher to educate my students fairly.
Piercy's book returns me to those decades of my youth.
This was a worthwhile return for me, albeit an often confusing one given Piercy's technique and the huge number of characters.
October 13, 2025
Really awesome. About half of this book is dedicated to Vida's political action and the other half is dedicated to her lovers and if about 2/3s of that second half was also political this would genuinely be a perfect novel. Piercy writes a narrative about radical leftist organizing with such love, with such steadfastness, with such respect for the ugliest parts of it including the violence and the disagreement and the bleakness it forces you to reckon with. And how all men SUCK no matter how leftist they are. But anyways. Litany for survival in the last lines of this (paraphrased): No matter how futile in the face of the ever tightening coil of imperial and capitalist inheritance of the world, one can always push history just a little bit. I WILL WASTE NONE OF MY LIFE.
July 20, 2018
I picked up this book bc Marge Piercy’s name came up numerous times while I was researching feminism & science fiction—so I figured anything she wrote had to be good! This was not sci-fi, but that didn’t deter me. However, this was a disappointing read. Though well written and organized, the story leaves much to be desired. Is it a romance novel? I can’t tell. There’s not enough romance for it to be a true romance, but not enough of the political fugitive plot line for it to be a book in whatever genre that would entail. All of the romances were exhausting, some of the politics upheld by the main character made her extremely unlikeable, and absolutely nothing ended in a satisfying way.
November 10, 2021
Incredible work of feminist literature. In the days when feminism consisted of fighting against fascism. A novel about the Weather Underground which were fascist criminals themselves who didn’t support the Black Panther Party but nevertheless appeared ignorantly and naively to themselves to be fighting on the right side. Shows the beauty of femininity through the eyes of a feminist. How even living underground womanhood can be expressed to the fullest extent. The ending is remarkable!
December 23, 2021
I was caught up in feelings of nostalgia and yearnings like a car crash that you pass by and can’t look away from. Reminded me of so many people and experiences of my days being so obsessed with social change despite my timeline being 30 years later. Vida does a great job of capturing conversations and ideas and struggles of the activists of the times. Highly recommend.
September 10, 2022
The author preface to the reissue is compelling. She clearly knew her subjects. She captures the life of those living invisibly and those few who connected with them. This would no longer be possible in usa today.
May 11, 2020
Disappointing.
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