Growing Up Underground

by Jane Alpert

Jane Alpert and her boyfriend fall in with a group in the East Village that manufactures bombs which are detonated in the NYC offices of major corporations (luckily, no one was hurt). Albert goes on the lam when the feds close in and spend the next few years; traveling around the country under aliases before finally giving up and serving time in prison.

Genres: Feminism, History, Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Memoir

374 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jane Alpert is primarily known as a sixties radical who participated in several bombings. Her book describes how this came to pass, how she was arrested, how she skipped bail, how she lived as a fugitive for several years, how she turned herself in and something of her prison experience and post-incarceration life up until 1981. Insofar as there is any politics, any ideological consideration, in this book, it is focused on her changing from being a radical terrorist to becoming a radical feminist.

But, really, there's not much to her politics, especially in the 'terrorist' phase. Throughout, Alpert's concerns focus on personal relationships and on sex. Here, by her account, the move towards feminism is relevant as she had gotten into trouble precisely because she had been a youthful follower of older men.

I note that Alpert is commonly identified with the Weather Underground. This, by her account, is false. Although she did know some of them, she was never a part of them. Indeed, most of her contact was conflictual as regards feminism.

Alpert's greatest achievement in her account is to have traced her consciousness as it happened, rather than working from some assumed position of achieved objectivity. In other words, we get the teenaged father-adorer, the collegiate classics student, the budding editor living in two worlds, one of the Cambridge University Press, the other of "Rat" and the countercultural press--we get all this as it apparently happened, this and her many love and sex affairs. In consequence, as she comes to renounce her past, she relativizes her past relationships--but this only after having represented what they had meant to her at the time. This is something of an accomplishment and did offer this male reader some insight into the issues the feminism of the seventies addressed.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Alpert was another middle-class white woman with a fancy education who was seduced by leftist radicalism during the turbulence of the late 60's. Or one could blame her audacious lover, Sam Melville, who lured her into a life of bomb making and eventually a fugitive existence. Too bad. She had a promising career in Manhattan as an editor. Thank goodness this autobiography does not contain any mind-numbing leftist rhetoric. It does, however, contain a lot of details about Jane's feminist awakening, after she which she turned against male dominated revolutionaries and engaged in petty squabbles with her former comrades. Ironically, the details of her life as a fugitive were the least absorbing part of her story.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Alpert certainly has serious "Movement" cred -- she was involved in the bombings of several New York buildings, and moved with all the major players in the late 60's/early 70's. Her memoir suffers from a kind of "Elle Magazine" vibe...too many tales of her sex life, her appearance, her fashion choices. Too many sentences that start out something like "Lonnie was a beautiful man and I found myself in bed with him within hours." Her underground life takes up only the last third of the book; perhaps this is because she wants to set up her transformation to radical feminism with a kind of confessional of her past sins of dependence on men and the crimes of the chauvinists in the Movement, but I expected more. For historical purposes however, this can be a very fun read. Enjoy sentences like "In order to communicate better, we dropped some acid."

[Willard Sperry]

I've been reading memoirs of people from the 60s. I didn't like Jane as a person. The radicals were the most popular people who had the best parties. So there was social climbing going on as well as protests against the war in Vietnam and Civil Rights. In the end, Jane lied to the FBI to cover her ass and when that failed she ratted out everybody so she could to get the most lenient prison sentence. I was contemptuous of that ploy. I don't think she really understood the consequences of what she was doing. Book learning. The publishing job was a good one. She should have stayed on that path. All these people: Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, attention whores looking for the maximum amount of publicity.

[Chad Montabon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange in tone. There are direct admissions of guilt, which sometimes suggest a pridefulness and then there are the standard apologetics like with Tom Hayden's 'Reunion'. Overall an up-and-down read that is worth the time and ads to the story, but doesn't really hit on the areas I was most interested in.

[Lisa]

This is Black History Month 2014, and (among other subjects) I have been reading about the Black Panthers, especially Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, whom the FBI and Chicago Police murdered on December 4, 1969. The Weather Underground - who had tried to affiliate with the Panthers, who in turn had kept them at arm's length - stepped up their violence after those murders.

The Weather Underground's manifesto, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, and Weatherman Jane Alpert's memoir, Growing Up Underground, are on my to-be-read list, but they are not priorities during Black History Month (there's so much else to read and there are so many movies to watch for BHM). However, in reading about Clark and Hampton today I ran across this commentary about Prairie Fire, which lowers that book on my TBR roster, and which also mentions Jane Alpert:

Source: The New York Times: "Seeds of Terror". (November 22, 1981), page 6:

By 1974, however, the Weathermen demonstrated that they were fast losing touch with the real world: 25,000 copies of a book-length document called Prairie Fire, actually printed with gloved hands to avoid fingerprints, were released from the underground and it was without doubt one of the most boring political manifestoes ever written. The war was finally ending, Richard Nixon was being booted out, and the last thing anyone wanted to read was a paean to black terrorism combined with a tired lecture on dialectical materialism.

That same year, one Weather Underground fugitive, Jane Alpert, gave herself up, and in the days while she was waiting to be sentenced, she chose me, by this time a reporter for The Times, to speak with. She told me of her travels underground and of how Weathermen fugitives lived joyless, determined lives, existing on yogurt and endless political debate, spending the night here and there in sleeping bags.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm thinking about feminists and guns and violence. So Alpert seemed like a good woman to consider. I love autobiographies and this book is conventional for an autobiography. Alpert tells us the whole story from her early childhood through to returning to prison after leaving the underground. Like many people who write autobiographies, she wants answers for herself and to present to others to explain why she did what she did. One explanation is the powerful influence of Sam Melville who she portrays as slightly mentally ill. Thirty years later, that feels a bit flat. It's an interesting personal view of history from 1968 through 1974. Her relationship with Robin Morgan as she recounts it in this book is fascinating. I don't feel that I have much more insight into feminists and guns and violence, but it was a pleasurable read.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is interesting to read this autobiography of political bomber Alpert in this day and age. How is someone radicalized? Jane traces her evolution from dissatisfaction with government policy and wanting to make a difference coincided with association with radicals led her down a slippery slope and the momentum took over. in here we also have first hand character sketches of 60s and 70s radicals like government mole George Demmerle, unhinged narcissist bomber Sam Melville, poet feminist Robin Morgan, cell member Pat Swinton, and more. I found the self-assesment very honest and revealing. Jane was brave and detailed in this telling which rapidly winds up when she begins her 2 years of incarceration.

[HeavyReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

When my friend Amy and I were tight, this was her favorite book. I finally got to read it, and I wasn't too impressed. I thought the book was about a child who grew up while living underground with her revolutionaly parents. Instead it was about a young woman who participated in some (ill planned and designed) rebellious acts againt US imperialism. The author seems to think that she came of age ("grew up) while she was living underground, evading the authorities. I didn't really like her attitude at any point in the book.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I read this, but I was in my early 20s and I was captivated by the idea of this rebellious young woman. I still have the book and should probably pick it up again and see what I think now that it's been over a decade or so since I first read it. But I still recommend it to anyone who likes to read about the unknown rebels of our country.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw Mark Rudd out plugging his new book. He mentioned this title that I recall reading some years ago. I liked it, and I remember the author striking me as somewhat naive. But it's an interesting slice of social history.