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Spoke
Coleman has written a moving and thoughtful memoir of his formative years during the tumult of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s. An intensely personal journey into the past that offers vital lessons for the future, Spoke combines the intimacy of an autobiography with the drama of an exciting and well-told story all underpinned by the gravity of a serious work of history. The result is a highly listenable and incisive work filled with tragedy and triumph, a resonant narrative informed by Coleman's singular life experience and his candor in speaking hard truths.
In 1963, Coleman's mother was engaged in the civil rights struggle in Oklahoma, participating in lunch-counter sit-ins and demonstrations and the historic March on Washington. On the bus to Washington she agreed to sell her home in an all-White suburb to a Black doctor. This led to her illegal incarceration in a mental institution as a means to stop the sale and silence her continuing activism. Five years later, prompted by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Coleman initiated his own civil disobedience in protest to the Vietnam War. His act of defiance serendipitously created an opportunity to free his mother. Coleman s experiences, and those of his mother, provide a lens through which to view one of the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century.
In 1963, Coleman's mother was engaged in the civil rights struggle in Oklahoma, participating in lunch-counter sit-ins and demonstrations and the historic March on Washington. On the bus to Washington she agreed to sell her home in an all-White suburb to a Black doctor. This led to her illegal incarceration in a mental institution as a means to stop the sale and silence her continuing activism. Five years later, prompted by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Coleman initiated his own civil disobedience in protest to the Vietnam War. His act of defiance serendipitously created an opportunity to free his mother. Coleman s experiences, and those of his mother, provide a lens through which to view one of the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century.
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First published August 28, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 6, 2022
Fascinating story of Joseph Gilchrist, his growing up, his parents growing up, his academic career at Cornell in the 1960's, his anti-Vietnam war stance, trial as draft resister, his prison time. Having lived through Vietnam protests, I found the stories of the Ellsberg brothers fascinating. Having never been imprisoned, I found the descriptions of the humiliations of the various prisons fascinating. An interesting read.
January 27, 2024
I know the author and he is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. It was interesting to learn of his background. Some parallels to mine elicited both tears and smiles.
September 19, 2013
In 1959, in the Oklahoma City suburb of Warr Acres, Rosalyn Coleman Gilchrist, a married mother with three young sons, suffered third-degree burns over 90% of her body from what was either a bathroom dress-cleaning incident with a can of gasoline gone tragically awry or else a failed attempt at suicidal self-immolation. Rosalyn’s 10-year-old son, Joe Gilchrist (who would later as an adult change his name legally to Coleman and come to write Spoke, the memoir under review), ran outdoors to aim the garden hose ineffectually at the closed bathroom window like a traumatized Peanuts character, while inside the house his father and older brother took the necessary steps to break through the bathroom door and wrap Rosalyn in blankets and douse the flames.
After months of painful reconstructive surgery (“She lost her ears, her nose, her eyelids, and most of her fingers. Her breasts. Her lips. Part of her tongue”), Rosalyn returned home to an initially supportive community. However, it wasn’t long before a local reverend asked that Rosalyn not attend Sunday services because her scarred appearance was unnerving to the congregation.
During ongoing Oklahoma City hospital visits for treatment of her burn wounds, Rosalyn found solace through growing friendships with the African American nursing staff. Soon she was a welcome congregant of black church services at Calvary Baptist Church. She joined the NAACP and became a Youth Council volunteer, further alienating her from the all-white Warr Acres suburban community.
The Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council was the famed activist organization behind the 1958 Katz Drug Store lunch-counter sit-ins that ended the chain store's discriminatory lunch-counter policy throughout the South. By the time Rosalyn joined the organization in the early 60s, they were busier than ever staging sit-ins, demonstrations and rallies in support of civil rights. When Rosalyn divorced her husband and put their house up for sale to a black family, a cabal of outraged Warr Acres elders—including the aforementioned local reverend, the chief of police, and Rosalyn’s ex-husband—successfully conspired to have her committed to the state mental hospital.
Coleman eventually helped obtain his mother’s release from her illegal institutionalization, but not before moving out on his own, attending Cornell University, and becoming a campus Vietnam War draft resister. He gained wider notoriety when—inspired by the personal mentorship of radical Catholic antiwar priest Daniel Berrigan—he was arrested in 1970 along with seven others for breaking into the Federal Building in Rochester, New York and shredding Selective Service records.
Spoke is a bracing, full-immersion memoir about political activism in the 1960s that is unlike any memoir of the era you are ever likely to read. And it is as a testament to the indomitable spirit of his mother that Coleman’s memoir especially distinguishes itself. As he speaks with those who knew her during times when she was absent from his life, we share in his miraculous discovery of her kindnesses and near-mystical calm in the midst of personal anguish and adversity. She will inspire readers as surely as she inspired her son to strive always to do the right thing when called upon to take a stand.
After months of painful reconstructive surgery (“She lost her ears, her nose, her eyelids, and most of her fingers. Her breasts. Her lips. Part of her tongue”), Rosalyn returned home to an initially supportive community. However, it wasn’t long before a local reverend asked that Rosalyn not attend Sunday services because her scarred appearance was unnerving to the congregation.
During ongoing Oklahoma City hospital visits for treatment of her burn wounds, Rosalyn found solace through growing friendships with the African American nursing staff. Soon she was a welcome congregant of black church services at Calvary Baptist Church. She joined the NAACP and became a Youth Council volunteer, further alienating her from the all-white Warr Acres suburban community.
The Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council was the famed activist organization behind the 1958 Katz Drug Store lunch-counter sit-ins that ended the chain store's discriminatory lunch-counter policy throughout the South. By the time Rosalyn joined the organization in the early 60s, they were busier than ever staging sit-ins, demonstrations and rallies in support of civil rights. When Rosalyn divorced her husband and put their house up for sale to a black family, a cabal of outraged Warr Acres elders—including the aforementioned local reverend, the chief of police, and Rosalyn’s ex-husband—successfully conspired to have her committed to the state mental hospital.
Coleman eventually helped obtain his mother’s release from her illegal institutionalization, but not before moving out on his own, attending Cornell University, and becoming a campus Vietnam War draft resister. He gained wider notoriety when—inspired by the personal mentorship of radical Catholic antiwar priest Daniel Berrigan—he was arrested in 1970 along with seven others for breaking into the Federal Building in Rochester, New York and shredding Selective Service records.
The locks on the office doors were simple to break. Within minutes each team was at work. The six Rochester draft boards were located in an adjoining series of suites in the middle of the building's second floor. There we labored all night—prying open locked desks and file cabinets with crowbars, disgorging an avalanche of draft records, and then feeding them handful by handful into one of two paper shredders we'd brought with us. The shredders were noisy, but this didn't worry us. We were in the middle of the building on the second floor, and it was late night on a lazy holiday weekend. Downtown Rochester was a ghost town. There was nothing to worry about.
Spoke is a bracing, full-immersion memoir about political activism in the 1960s that is unlike any memoir of the era you are ever likely to read. And it is as a testament to the indomitable spirit of his mother that Coleman’s memoir especially distinguishes itself. As he speaks with those who knew her during times when she was absent from his life, we share in his miraculous discovery of her kindnesses and near-mystical calm in the midst of personal anguish and adversity. She will inspire readers as surely as she inspired her son to strive always to do the right thing when called upon to take a stand.
October 24, 2013
In the sixties ‘wheel of life’ folk song The Great Mandala, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary sings these lines: “Take your place on the great Mandala— As it moves through your brief moment of time— Win or lose now, you must choose now— And if you lose you’re only losing your life.” With this book, Coleman brings those words full circle, so to speak, delivering a rendition of his own life that, though marked by hardship and judgement, turns always toward a better day. Here’s the story of a man who took his place on that great wheel, and did not lose his life but gained a richer, better one. Even the title of the work evokes the turning wheel metaphor, in addition to other meanings.
Though SPOKE is Coleman’s memoir, Rosie Coleman Gilchrist, the author’s mother, hovers above every page, providing rich background, sustenance and support for her youngest son as he seeks his way out of one life-turning event after another. With an epistolary style, almost journalistic, Coleman’s chapters weave his life back and forth, from boyhood in Oklahoma, to his parents’ deeply unhappy marriage and his father’s active physical and psychological abuse. The chapters are, as the author himself states later in the book, “...words screaming to get out of my head...little versions of my locked-up self.”
He writes of a childhood deprived of material things, but enriched by a mother’s activism and idealistic endeavors. The signal event in his young life is his mother’s self-immolation when he was eleven. When Rose survives, the harshness and seeming insanity of her act stamps the family with shame and introspection, especially oldest brother Gordon who must care for their brutalized mother. Then another turn of the wheel. With her determination to change the world, the horribly-scarred Rose Gilchrist shows son Joe (Coleman) how to survive the flames of his own life, his departure from home to escape his father’s capricious abuse when Joe is sixteen, his resolve to refuse induction into the Army, his subsequent arrest and ultimately his prison term as “...a felon for peace.” Through all the hardship and disruption, Coleman takes direction and comfort from his resolute mother, and their relationship is the thread that holds the book together.
Like a churning wheel, Coleman reinvents himself time and again. By book’s end he’s made peace with his sexuality, and marries John, “...the love of my life.” It’s notable that, in these times of an energetic LGBT rights movement, Coleman’s passion for justice seems to have dissipated, his energy spent during the great issues of the sixties—Vietnam in particular. Or at least he writes little of his political activity in regard to LGBT issues. If the book has a flaw it might be this: that with his opportunity here— and with his superb ability as a writer— the author might have better articulated his views on gay rights, particularly the treatment of bisexual citizens. Perhaps, as he says, “...that’s a subject for another book.”
Let’s hope it is. If SPOKE is any indication, with mother Rose as his guide, Coleman will write that book, the wheel will turn once again and the world will never be quite the same.
Byron Edgington, author of The Sky Behind Me: A Memoir of Flying & Life
Though SPOKE is Coleman’s memoir, Rosie Coleman Gilchrist, the author’s mother, hovers above every page, providing rich background, sustenance and support for her youngest son as he seeks his way out of one life-turning event after another. With an epistolary style, almost journalistic, Coleman’s chapters weave his life back and forth, from boyhood in Oklahoma, to his parents’ deeply unhappy marriage and his father’s active physical and psychological abuse. The chapters are, as the author himself states later in the book, “...words screaming to get out of my head...little versions of my locked-up self.”
He writes of a childhood deprived of material things, but enriched by a mother’s activism and idealistic endeavors. The signal event in his young life is his mother’s self-immolation when he was eleven. When Rose survives, the harshness and seeming insanity of her act stamps the family with shame and introspection, especially oldest brother Gordon who must care for their brutalized mother. Then another turn of the wheel. With her determination to change the world, the horribly-scarred Rose Gilchrist shows son Joe (Coleman) how to survive the flames of his own life, his departure from home to escape his father’s capricious abuse when Joe is sixteen, his resolve to refuse induction into the Army, his subsequent arrest and ultimately his prison term as “...a felon for peace.” Through all the hardship and disruption, Coleman takes direction and comfort from his resolute mother, and their relationship is the thread that holds the book together.
Like a churning wheel, Coleman reinvents himself time and again. By book’s end he’s made peace with his sexuality, and marries John, “...the love of my life.” It’s notable that, in these times of an energetic LGBT rights movement, Coleman’s passion for justice seems to have dissipated, his energy spent during the great issues of the sixties—Vietnam in particular. Or at least he writes little of his political activity in regard to LGBT issues. If the book has a flaw it might be this: that with his opportunity here— and with his superb ability as a writer— the author might have better articulated his views on gay rights, particularly the treatment of bisexual citizens. Perhaps, as he says, “...that’s a subject for another book.”
Let’s hope it is. If SPOKE is any indication, with mother Rose as his guide, Coleman will write that book, the wheel will turn once again and the world will never be quite the same.
Byron Edgington, author of The Sky Behind Me: A Memoir of Flying & Life
July 6, 2016
Spoke takes us back to the '60's and early '70's when the news headlines were heavy with the Civil Rights marches and demonstrations and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Spoke gives us an unusually personal inside look at those two issues through the eyes and voice of Joe Gilchrist (Coleman) whose first major protest was returning his draft card to the draft board in his Oklahoma hometown while he was a student at Cornell. There was a price to be paid for such defiance.
How did Joe Gilchrist come to the belief he should resist the draft and raid and ransack draft offices and FBI offices? Could it have been his saintly mother who influenced him or perhaps it was his demonic father or was it that his hometown and state who gave full support to the US involvement in the Vietnam Civil War that prompted him to justify his anti-war actions?
For those of us who lived through the '60's and '70's, Joe's story is a bit of a refresher course which makes us recall and remember the marches, demonstrations, violence and general anti-war attitude that hung over our country at the time. For the generations that follow us, the Joe Gilchrist story is truly priceless because there are few draft resisters who have told-all about their anti-war protests. Joe Gilchrist has provided us with a very personal, unique, detailed, intriguing and informative account of his life during this era. His book gives a perfect opportunity for the post-war generations to become informed about the most controversial war of the 20th century.
How did Joe Gilchrist come to the belief he should resist the draft and raid and ransack draft offices and FBI offices? Could it have been his saintly mother who influenced him or perhaps it was his demonic father or was it that his hometown and state who gave full support to the US involvement in the Vietnam Civil War that prompted him to justify his anti-war actions?
For those of us who lived through the '60's and '70's, Joe's story is a bit of a refresher course which makes us recall and remember the marches, demonstrations, violence and general anti-war attitude that hung over our country at the time. For the generations that follow us, the Joe Gilchrist story is truly priceless because there are few draft resisters who have told-all about their anti-war protests. Joe Gilchrist has provided us with a very personal, unique, detailed, intriguing and informative account of his life during this era. His book gives a perfect opportunity for the post-war generations to become informed about the most controversial war of the 20th century.
June 23, 2014
Excellent Heartwrenching Mind boggling
Coleman...a marvelous multi-talented human who I am privileged to know, admire and adore, puts a light to his own back story..
As a curious friend, who admittedly did not know him well at all, I first started reading this book eager to learn more about my fascinating friend, his mom as well as his life before we met almost 10 years ago. My surprise has been my own reaction, including how many times I stopped, went back to re-read, to absorb not only the familiar time period, places and people, but to also feel the confusion, the anguish and the love that seemed to grab at my mind, spirit and heart.
As you read you will take from Spoke:... more than just a reading of our history, insights on many human levels, but you will also look into someone's heart and be better for the time spent learning new perspectives.
Excellent...Thanks, Coleman, for sharing!
Coleman...a marvelous multi-talented human who I am privileged to know, admire and adore, puts a light to his own back story..
As a curious friend, who admittedly did not know him well at all, I first started reading this book eager to learn more about my fascinating friend, his mom as well as his life before we met almost 10 years ago. My surprise has been my own reaction, including how many times I stopped, went back to re-read, to absorb not only the familiar time period, places and people, but to also feel the confusion, the anguish and the love that seemed to grab at my mind, spirit and heart.
As you read you will take from Spoke:... more than just a reading of our history, insights on many human levels, but you will also look into someone's heart and be better for the time spent learning new perspectives.
Excellent...Thanks, Coleman, for sharing!
January 3, 2015
On holiday in Mineral Point, WI and picked up this book in a shop. Turns out the author lives in the town. I was captured by the fact it is a true story and I had never even heard about it. Into the book about 50 pages...
January 8, 2015
Good chronicle of life and consequences of being a Vietnam draft resister.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews