Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution

by Peter Andreas

“Thoroughly engrossing” — The New York Times Book Review
“Luminous” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Those who enjoyed Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle will find much to admire here.” — Booklist (starred review)

The intimate true story of a boy on the run with his mother, as she abducts him to South America in search of the revolution.

Carol Andreas was a traditional 1950s housewife from a small Mennonite town in central Kansas who became a radical feminist and Marxist revolutionary. From the late sixties to the early eighties, she went through multiple husbands and countless lovers while living in three states and five countries. She took her youngest son, Peter, with her wherever she went, even kidnapping him and running off to South America after his straitlaced father won a long and bitter custody fight.

They were chasing the revolution together, though the more they chased it the more distant it became. They battled the bad “isms” (sexism, imperialism, capitalism, fascism, consumerism), and fought for the good “isms” (feminism, socialism, communism, egalitarianism). They were constantly running, moving, hiding. Between the ages of five and eleven, Peter attended more than a dozen schools and lived in more than a dozen homes, moving from the comfortably bland suburbs of Detroit to a hippie commune in Berkeley to a socialist collective farm in pre-military coup Chile to highland villages and coastal shantytowns in Peru. When they secretly returned to America they settled down clandestinely in Denver, where his mother changed her name to hide from his father.

This is an extraordinary account of a deep mother-son bond and the joy and toll of growing up with a radical mother in a radical age. Andreas is an insightful and candid narrator whose unforgettable memoir gives new meaning to the old saying, “the personal is political.”

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, History, Politics, Audiobook, Biography

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2017

About the author

Peter Andreas is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. Andreas has written numerous books, published widely in scholarly journals and policy magazines, presented Congressional testimony, written op-eds for major newspapers, and provided frequent media commentary.

Reviews

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike most memoirs of dystopian childhoods, this author as a child was loved by and had a good relationship with both his mother and father. Also, neither parent had a drug problem nor was alcoholic.

So why do I call his childhood dystopian? The author as a child may have been loved by both mother and father, but the two parents hated each other and insisted on child custody. And when custody wasn't theirs, kidnapping and leaving the country was resorted to.

At age six in 1972± the author as a child was taken by his mother to Chile to experience the Allende revolution. His mother was a Marxist and planned to write a book about Chile and wanted her child to be there with her. This was certainly not the wish of the child's father. In 1973 the Allende socialist government was ended by a coup d'état supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Suddenly anyone with leftist leanings was likely to be placed in prison or sometimes "disappeared." The mother's research materials had to be destroyed, and the two fled the country.

Next they went to Peru, via Argentina, where they associated with a neighborhood organization that later evolved into the Shining Path militant group. There they lived lives similar to most poor Peruvians, but to American standards was quite rustic, dirty, and primitive. Eventually mother and son returned to the States in order to clear up property issues related to the divorce. Custody had to be determined by the court ruling, and the father was given legal custody of the child.

But that didn't last long and the author (as a child) was kidnapped by his mother, taken across the Canadian border, and then back to Peru. After about a year the mother and son returned to live in Denver, Colorado in hiding, their whereabouts not known to the father. Eventually, the father and his new wife learned of the child's whereabouts, but decided at that point it was best not to pursue custody and settle for frequent visitations.

I found the most traumatic part of the story to be the fact that the author as a child willingly allowed himself to be kidnapped by his mother. Many readers will be puzzled by his choice to do so. Life with his mother was not pleasant, and most readers would agree that he should have stayed with his father. The author explains it as follows: He knew that if he stayed with his father that his mother would blame him for the decision, but if he went with his mother he knew that this father would blame his mother, not him. He didn't want to break faith with his mother so he went with her.

Before he was kidnapped the author had this touching conversation with his stepmother in which he explored what would happen if his mother took him. (He's about 10 years old at the time.)

"What if my mother got me?" I asked Rosalind as she made dinner.

"Well, we'd try to find you."

"But what if she took me out of the country?"

There was a long pause.

"Always remember our love goes with you wherever you are."

"My Dad isn't happy if I don't live with him, but my Mom isn't happy if I don't live with her," I sighed.

"Just remember, Peter, you're not responsible for your parents' happiness."

I nodded unconvinced. I'd been getting the opposite message my whole life.

Since the author survived to become a successful academic writer as an adult (Author's bio), it's tempting to conclude that his unconventional childhood was a blessing. It caused him to be fluent in two languages and he experienced a variety of cultures, living standards, and politics. So I found it interesting to find the following excerpt near the end of the book in which the author reflects on his childhood and comments on whether he would want his own children to have the same experiences.

As for me, I wish I could explain to my mother what I feel now. In some ways, she did fall into some “bad mothering.” A child should not feel that he must let his mother kidnap him in order to secure her love, or be a nightly witness to his mother's political screaming matches and marital passions, or bear the weight of her suicidal thoughts. A child should not be allowed to play with a loaded gun because it is “good training for the revolution," nor should he see his mother arrested as she shoplifts his birthday present. He should not have to defy his mother's ideological insistence that he attend a bad high school because it is more “working class.” All in all, a child needs more stability than to live in three states and five countries in more than a dozen different homes and schools between the ages of five and eleven. Certainly, I hope to protect my own daughters from all of this.

I found the book to be a compelling reading experience. I need to also mention that the author had access to his mother's diary during the writing of this book and he included frequent quotations of hers taken from the diary (she's now deceased). So the book is a biography of her too, sort of a dual memoir.

Some of my Goodreads friends will be interested to know that both of the author's grandparents lived in North Newton, Kansas and were associated with Bethel College, and his parents were both graduates of Bethel College.

Here's a link to the obituary of the author's mother:
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...

Here' a link to a May 5, 2017 NY Times article in which the author pays tribute to his mother:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/op...

Here's a link to a blog posting that emphasizes the fact that the author's mother was a Maoist. This is consistent with information contain the this memoir:
https://usefulstooges.com/2017/06/30/...

Here's a link to a review of Rebel Mother from the Mennonite World Review. One thing of interest that I noticed in this review is that it goes out of the way to defend the author's father. The review also suggests that the mother's passion for social justice and fairness could have been an extreme response inspired by "Mennonite values of peacemaking, community-building and global humanitarianism."
http://mennoworld.org/2017/08/14/colu...

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

So here we have another memoir about an unconventional childhood. I have to admit, I have a weakness for those. They always bring something new to the table about the vast range of human experience. This one is no exception. I enjoyed it.

I have to admit that this wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I had in mind a book about being raised by a hippie mom. There was a little of that, but it was more about being raised by a radical Marxist mother whose entire life was devoted to the cause. If all the world’s problems had been solved and universal justice and equality had been achieved by any means other than Marxism, she would have been upset about The Revolution being that much farther off.

Still, there are many fascinating things about this epic journey. We visit a Latin America, seething with revolutionary fervor, during the tumultuous seventies. We got to see Peru’s Shining Path movement in its early days before things got really bloody. We see what it was like to live on a farm in Chile and a slum in Peru. To watch Carol Andreas go through one young lover after another, including her long tumultuous relationship with poor messed up Raul. We experience what it was like to be the center of the great tug-of-war between Peter’s parents. Not everyone gets roped into being a co-conspirator in his own kidnapping.

Objectively speaking, Carol really was a terrible mother but a great Marxist. She saw everything through the lens of her radical ideology, not just straight up Marxism but a kind of feminist Marxism of her own devising which was so much more interesting than just chapter and verse Lenin, Mao and Che Guevara. It’s hard not to admire her dogged, unflagging commitment. She really did seem to mean well. She succeeded in raising one radical son, and a second son with an obvious personality disorder, (this may not be his mother’s fault) and another son who was somewhere in between. Not bad considering the crazy ride that having her for a mother was.

I think Mr. Andreas did a fine job of navigating all the complexities, twists and turns in this tale. Another piece of the human journey.

[Karen Ashmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Some of it reminded me of myself as a young activist single mom raising my son and other parts reminded me of my friends. The author writes of his adventures living with his mom under Allende's Chile and then among Shining Path activists in Peru. All the while I was reading it, I kept thinking Carol Andreas sounded familiar. Turns out she moved to Denver after the revolutionary life in South America. Although she died a few months after I moved to Colorado, I do remember reading her published work while pursuing my master's degree in International Studies at DU. May her legacy live on.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the rare novels that impressed me all throughout, it was deeply sentimental and unforgettable. The story of Carol Andreas about how she sacrificed her morals and dignity to provide a noble life for her son was admirable. While I did not applaud her kidnapping her son, I felt that she was justified knowing that she wanted him to have the best life. The way that Peter describes his mother is touching, he explained how she was a feminist, a poor but justified thief, and a woman of great strength.

There were many chapters that stood out to me, but the two main ones were: Was Jesus revolutionary and her mother support for lesbians. The first one mainly because the way the chapter starts is very luring, it goes into detail of the inconsistencies of religion without regard of offending anyone. It is very blunt, the conversations that she had about the nature of God sparked my sociological perspective imagination. Also for the latter, I did not like her input about lesbians and how his mother envied that she was not, based on how she perceives them. Carol was a very interesting person that propelled me to read more about her life outside this book.

Clearly she was a rebel in every way, I could not help but emotional when Peter went away for college. Just his mother departing words almost had me crying, she just wanted him to go and change the world, make it revolutionary.

By far the best memoir I read, my only regret is that I sort of rushed it based on insomnia, but it did not take away the beauty of this novel.

Highly recommended!

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memoirs, especially memoirs about child/parent relationships, are always complicated. This one is too. But bravo to the author for finding the good in his radical childhood. Hopefully it helps him be more aware of his privilege and work toward leveling the playing field.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebel Mother is a remarkable book. The author’s life as a child was beyond adventurous. He was an involuntary participant in the political obsessions of a mother who took the idea of revolution so seriously that she kidnapped her own child and took him to find it in South America. They lived in many places, remote and destitute. And he eventually endured legal proceedings and a bitter divorce. It is a wild story, very well told. (Full disclosure: the author is a colleague of mine, although I had no idea about anything in this book.)

The story comes to life through the understated voice of the author, who provides spare descriptions of dire conditions, along with the actual voice of his mother, through journals he found after her death. The journal entries are haunting and memorable. And there are many photographs that enhance the text.

There is so much to reflect on this book, and the author does a fair amount of that in the epilogue. It does not give anything away to say that the young son of this intensely political woman is now a political scientist. And one can only marvel at life that Peter Andreas was crossing borders illicitly as a child and is now writing about border crossings and the illicit economy as a distinguished professor. That may not have been his mother's wish, but no mother could wish for a more compassionate book than this one.

[Jason Salzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite memoirs are as much about the author as about someone else in the author's life. In this case, it's Andreas' mother, who leaves you simultaneously awestruck, bewildered, and angry. She's fearlessly committed to changing the world, and she believes she's equally committed to raising her son. But you won't necessarily see it that way, as Andreas is yanked from city to city and placed in situations no kid would want to be in. At least that's how I see it, as the hyper parent I am. And that's why I liked the book so much. It made me take another look at my own approach to parenting and my political ideals. And even though I ultimately think Andreas would have been better off with his conservative father than his revolutionary mother, I found some inspiration and parenting lessons from Andreas' mother that I'll never forget.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A truly unusual story about a truly unusual life. There were many times I felt that the author's mother was one of those people who wasn't cut out for parenthood whatsoever, and there were other times that I reflected that Andreas's oddball, globetrotting childhood educated him in world culture in ways no amount of normal childhood studying ever could.

There are moments of utter cringe in this book (the traditional definition, not the meme definition). There isn't any excuse for exposing one's child to the level of sexuality that young Andreas was exposed to, and the immediate physical danger he so often courted (like being given a loaded handgun to play with by an adult.) There are also scenes of animal cruelty during the author's childhood in South America--both neglect from simple ignorance and poverty, and in the form of culturally sanctioned sadism which is part of the "blood fiestas" that have been periodically exposed by animal welfare organizations.

The trajectory of Ms. Andreas's political activism brings up questions about the right and wrong ways to do activism, and whether one's status as a revolutionary is compatible with family life. I suppose different audiences will have wildly different answers to this.

[Marcella Wigg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a memoir!

Peter Andreas grew up with two parents who loved him dearly, former Mennonites from rural Kansas and Nebraska who moved to Detroit for greater opportunities in education and individual freedom. The problem was, his parents did not love each other. After his mother's Ph.D. dissertation work radicalized her into a hard-line Marxist revolutionary in the 1960s, she could not longer remain married to his relatively traditional, stoic father, content with bland meals, decades-long monogamy, and the banality of retirement savings. Instead, she decided that she would take her three sons with her and embark on a journey to ensure that they had revolutionary childhoods as well.

This quest for a haven from the corrupting influences of capitalism led her to raise her children in a Berkeley commune house, and later, after failing to find the revolution she sought in the American West, to various countries in Latin America--first to Chile, then Argentina, then Peru, almost always with young Peter in tow, all in a constant struggle for subsistence while fomenting the revolution she was convinced she would see in her lifetime. She cohabited with various lovers and prevented Peter from knowing of communications from his father, but she clearly loved him in her own way.

Given the circumstances, it would be so easy for Andreas to demonize his mother. Nevertheless he never does so, painting her fairly with faults and positive traits alike. His father is depicted fairly as well, imperfect but justifiably brokenhearted, and when his stepmother tells him that they know where he lives and don't want to interrupt his life again, it's such a moving moment: they have resolved to prioritize his needs for a home and stability, even at the cost of ever knowing him well or having him live with them.

Parenting is a complex thing, and memoirs frequently make you consider parenthood. Rebel Mother raises not only questions about what makes a suitable childhood but about the 1960s-1970s counterculture and what rebellion means when you're steeped in radical communist doctrine your entire childhood as well. I don't think Andreas could have written a more eloquent tribute to his complicated, troubled but loving mother.

[Matt Hermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard for me to recommend this memoir. I was drawn in by the promise of learning about this woman's activism and the experiences of her son in the movement. The jacket promises "an extraordinary account of a deep mother-son bond and the joy and toll of growing up with a radical mother in a radical age." As it turns out, lots of toll and not much joy. The narrator has a generosity of spirit I find remarkable. I had no sympathy for his mother at all; I found her delusional, self-absorbed, and abusive. He says he never felt neglected even while acknowledging his mother was "sometimes" recklessly negligent. A fine line, I suppose.
All in all, a painful read. Sometimes interesting, mostly inf

[Susan Horan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't put down!

Lived this book because it is well written and believe it or not suspencful. Could not wait to see where this mother and son duo would end up next while hoping they would be ok.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fascinating to me : a 1950s housewife (Mennonite, no less) becomes liberated, gets a PhD in sociology, and throws herself wholeheartedly into preparations for the Revolution, which must surely be right behind the corner. Her much more conservative husband is not amused, and an ensuing divorce comes with a long drawn-out custody battle. So Carol moves to Berkeley with her 3 sons, one of whom is very young. But after a while even living in a commune in Berkeley palls, and Carol decides to go to Chile to investigate the role of women in Salvador Allende's socialist revolution. And she takes her 7- or y-year old boy (the author) with her. THis adventure comes to an abrupt halt with General Pinochet's military coup. After a couple of months in Buenos Aires, Carol and Peter are on the move again, now trying to find the communist REvolution in Peru. Instead, Carol falls in love with a much younger man, and Peter has a ringside seat for all their quarrels (ideological and personal) and passionate reconciliations. His teenage brothers stop by for visits, but ultimately Carol, Peter and Raul, his young stepfather, have to come back to the USA to resolve the divorce and custody battle. Peter discovers that he likes school and opts for a college education, to the dismay of his mother who feels that it would be much more radical for him to be a factory worker.

The picture of Carol that emerges from these pages is that of a very earnest radical who never renounced her ideals. She's so dedicated to her cause (even though it's never very clear what type of revolution she's expecting, exactly) that you feel sympathetic to her even when her dreary communist jargon makes you want to shake her. All these arguments about Maoism vs Leninism, about the role of feminism in the struggle against the bourgeoisie... these seem to have been food and drink to Carol and her cohorts, but now, in 2018, those discussions have a very quaint flavor. I can totally relate to Peter who ultimately outgrew that world (even though he did study political sciences). Carol's parenting is shot through with the same revolutionary zeal : every act, every choice, is influenced by her desire to make a revolutionary out of Peter (at some point that even includes a very tolerant attitude to guns, a total turnaround from her pacifist beginnings). Some of this is cringe-worthy, and some of it is unforgivable, such as when she discusses her suicidal thoughts with her then 10-year old, or when she allows him to think that she might be killed during one of her activities. But Peter seems to have forgiven and accepted, and ultimately, the reader is left with the impression of a misguided but sincere person who wanted to make the world a better place -but had no real clue as to how to do that.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about a complicated, deep and enduring bond between a mother who searched for the revolution in South America in the 1960's-1980's and her son. Peter was abducted by his mother Carol after losing custody of him and from 5-11 years old moved from country to country in Carol's hope that she could find a place where justice and equality prevailed.

After I finished Rebel Mother I thought about all the ways that mother and son were alike. They were passionate, adventurous, and able to easily fit into different cultures and had the ability to keep their wits about them even in danger. But more importantly, Peter and Carol had a vast and deep connection to each other because Carol loved her son and Peter loved his mother. He loved her through danger, poverty, disease and poor choices in men and rotten parenting. Her firm and loving commitment to him kept them together even when it all seemed untenable. For me, having lived through much at that time, I know how close the revolution seemed and how wild and wonderful and scary and dangerous this time was. Carol fascinated me due to her fierceness, rock-bottom commitment for fairness and justice and of course, to her son. Her need to change the unquestioned contract of becoming a 1950's traditional wife and mother led to hard consequences and choices as it often does. And both mother and son had to live with that.

In many ways the epilogue is where Peter Andreas moves from actor to observer as he examines the impact of his childhood. There were many losses including, and most importantly, having a distant relationship to his father with no access to the safety and stability that he could provide. What I love about this section is that the author writes about his mother as a fully realized person not just as a son stuck in childhood who cannot see his mother for who she is. That can be hard to do.

Peter did not become a radical and his mother saw it as a betrayal. She wanted to have her sons follow and keep her revolutionary commitments and was sad and sometimes bitter that they did not. He discovered this by reading her journals after her death. It is the beauty of the book that Peter did keep her commitment. They are not the same but they are similar. Peter cares about justice, equality and border crossings, international economies. He also did this by writing a beautiful tribute to a complicated woman with tenderness and clarity.

Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this book.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebel Mother is the fascinating true story of a young boy's experience "chasing the revolution" with his activist mother during the 1970s. Peter was an involuntary participant in his mother's political life, as she kidnapped him -twice - from his more conventional father, and moved with him from country to country searching for the ever elusive revolution in South America. During their time in South America, Peter and his mother, Carol, were destitute, living in squalor and many times in danger.

Rebel Mother is a very well-written and thought provoking memoir. The love that Peter has for his flawed and negligent mother and her love for him is very evident. This is not a memoir written to bash or denigrate his mother. Nor is it a memoir of self-pity. Instead, it is an honest recounting of a childhood spent with a mother who lived her convictions fully and felt that she was saving her son from a conformist, capitalistic life.

The story is enhanced by excerpts from Carol's diaries and letters, which she kept for decades. To hear her thoughts on the events presented in the book, in her own words, is what separates this from other memoirs and makes the story all the more powerful. Adding to that powerful impact is the fact that the adult Peter does not make excuses for his mother, but is able to see her as a fully realized person, even as he rejects her radical ideology and chooses a very different course for his own life.

[Esme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely readable. I was impressed at the author's capacity for compassion and understanding toward his mother's flaws and the perils that she exposed him to. At no point, even when lice are falling from his scalp like dandruff does he express a moment of self pity. I trusted the truth of his narrative because he was able to use his mother's journals as touchstones for his memory of time and events. (Sometimes when reading memoirs I question the author's memory because they are *so specific* without any supporting evidence.)

I felt great empathy for the author's father who had his children taken from him. But he acted with such maturity when he finally got the opportunity to see his youngest son again after the second time his ex-wife stole him away. I think he personified grace in that moment, when he tells his son, "we know where you are living, it's okay. We're not going to disrupt your life."

I've read other books about South American politics and people who hold hard left radical ideas, and it many ways I find them to be just as rigid and humorless as people who hold to dogmatic right-wing uber-religious principles. Either extreme squeezes the individuality from a person as they struggle to conform to the ideology, so it seems to me.

[Lorri Steinbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

No matter where you fall on whether you think Carol Andreas was a good mother or not, you will be forced to examine motherhood as an institution and what constitutes a happy childhood. Because Peter Andreas ends up happy and fulfilled with a career and a family and a stable home does this mean that Carol was a good mother, despite all outward appearances to the contrary or is it all just dumb luck that things turned out the way they did. There is much to be said for teaching your child to think critically and in the end I think that is what Peter took from his early life experiences. He may ultimately reject what his mother stands for, but he seems to come to it not from a place of anger or resentment, but from a place of considered thought. Great book group selection to discuss themes of motherhood, family, women's roles, siblings, etc.

[Karen Fasimpaur · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Rebel Mother” was a great read. Who could resist a memoir about a Mennonite housewife in the1950s who turns into a Marxist revolutionary and kidnaps her own son, the author, to chase down the revolution in Latin America? This book combines political dialogue, travel essay, and heart-wrenching family drama all in one.

In my reading, I often feel pulled between works that are “important” and intellectually stimulating and ones that are rollicking good reads – this book was both.

[Rebecca Sandham Mathwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good memoir. I was impressed by Mr. Andreas's ability to see the positive (and the humor) in his uniquely unstable, peripatetic childhood. He is remarkably compassionate and kind towards his mother considering all of the dangerous situations she put him in. A nuanced, compelling portrait of a complicated woman. While she loved her sons, she definitely put her own interests and beliefs first.

[timv · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, I knew the subject of the book and author’s mother, Carol, which just made this book all the more pleasurable and interesting to read. this is quite a story written with compassion and humor and there was enough tension in the story to keep me turning the pages. this book could’ve easily been written from a standpoint of anger or frustration, but it wasn’t and it’s a much better read because of it.

[Harriett Milnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend Joanne said I would like this book and I do! I found it fascinating, could hardly put it down. Radical politics. Feminist politics. Such a lot to think about, left in the past. I think most of us are proud of our children, awed at the heights they reach. Peter Andreas was afraid his mother thought him a sellout! Such a long time since I have even seen that word!

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible story, and one that captures -- albeit in an extreme way -- how the political shifts of the 1960s impacted many American families.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written telling of his own young life after discovering that his mother kept detailed diaries of hers.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting as I lived through some of the thinking of that time. The effects of having a mother who was a rebel and how it affected a young boy/man's life was fascinating.

[CarolineFromConcord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Andreas, now a successful professor with what sounds like a traditionally normal family, was raised by an intriguing nutcase of a mother who kept kidnapping him from the parent with custody and taking to him to South America to hunt down Marxist revolutions to fight in.

She seemed to love him, I'll give her that, but some of things she subjected him to (telling the little boy she had taken thousands of miles from all other relatives that she was thinking of committing suicide, for example, or sharing their joint bedroom with an endless train of young lovers) are not things a parent who loves a kid actually does, in my opinion. And she totally neglected the two older brothers. From the time they were teens, they were on their own. But she needed Peter from age 5 and up to lean on, frequently having him care for her, bring her food, and empty her chamber pot when she was sick in some hovel with no running water.

It certainly was an interesting childhood the author had, as he sums it up in his epilogue. A lot of what he learned about the world and social justice he kept with him in an adult form. He got really good at Spanish. And he often had fun. But he missed out on a father who loved him in a more traditional way and on many aspects of childhood that he says he would have liked to experience more.

I thought the book was really well done. In addition to Andreas's own memories, he had his deceased mother's diaries and letters to help reconstruct conversations, and he also had help from his father, his stepmother, and others who remembered certain dates and events better. He even had photos.

But how this woman developed from a good little Midwestern Mennonite girl to this over-the-top, promiscuous, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, hyper-feminist class activist is something her son doesn't explain. Probably nobody who knew her could. Some of the causes Carol Andreas espoused were worthy ones in many people's views, including mine, but her obsessive focus on them and all the side effects of that focus strike me as productive of bad stuff.

A friend who was inspired to read this said, At least the mother was interested in something. She wrote books, she taught college, and she wanted the revolution when it came to make a better world.

So there's that.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great first half set in Chile and Peru, and I found the mom’s ideological commitment fascinating and also enjoyed all of the material on the feminist movement. Loses steam towards the end. Don’t agree with Carol but I’m not mad at her.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of those that drew me in and would not let me go until I had finished it. I made not a single annotation or underline because the narrative was so compelling that I didn’t wish to stop and write.

Carol Andreas is raised as a Mennonite in North Newton, Kansas, and in the 1950s she marries another Mennonite seven years her elder. From this marriage she gives birth to three sons, one of whom is author, Peter Andreas, the youngest. As the Andreas family lives in suburban Detroit, Michigan, Carol eventually earns a PhD and radicalizes her political thinking. Against her husband’s wishes (he refuses to grant her a divorce), she packs up all three sons and moves to Berkeley, California, the epicenter of 1960s and 1970s radical politics. As part of her radicalization, Carol Andreas abdicates her traditional role as mother and allows her three sons to make many of their own decisions, for example, whether they want to attend school on a particular day. However, when she decides to move to South America to aid the revolution there, she takes eight-year-old Peter with her—partly to spite her husband, partly because the child is too young to care for himself, but mostly so that she can mold his socio-political views. The other two sons prefer to remain in California and live in the commune where they’ve all been living.

The heart of the book is about the years that Carol and Peter spend in three different South American countries. Instead of the warmth of a middle-class Michigan home, Peter lives a rather deprived life. He is subject to the harshest living conditions as his mother does what is necessary to aid others in their political goals. He witnesses her many different boyfriends, sometimes having to sleep in the same room with them as they make love. In one situation, his hair is infested with head lice. Worst, he is often placed in adult situations, “assignments” he accepts because they make him feel grown up. He even participates in his own kidnappings from Michigan schools, after his father has been awarded custody so that he can live with his mother in South America. His allegiances to each parent are probably stretched even tighter than most children of divorce, because his parents are from two different extremes and because both are set on having their way.

However, the narrative illustrates the strength of a love that can develop between a parent and child. Carol Andreas probably makes many mistakes, yet even so, son Peter never stops loving his mother. At one point, as he reaches college age, he does realize he will never be like his mother, nor exactly like his father. He must become his own person, and he informs each parent of his desires. If Peter has learned anything from his mother it is that he is responsible for his own life, his own happiness, and as he matures he begins to pursue the one he wants. Today, he is the author of ten books and is the John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University.

[Ronnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book on the recommendation of Hélène who had read it recently. When I wrote this review I forgot to include this part. This is NOT a children's book...but rather a story told by the author as a child through the prism of his mothers' diaries which she had written and snd didn't know until she passed away. The story/stories are written an a comparision/contrast method. The story tis about him growing up with his mother when she took him away from his father as his parents were in a vicious custody battle. This was the result of one (the mother) growing up and away from the sheltered life she had with his father while he was still functioning in the way he was brought up. I stand by with what I wrote afterwards. This book is a searing read on many levels. If you take this book and use it as a bookend to the other book of the sixties by Todd Gitlin it provides an unvarnished point/proof of why the alleged revolution that was revered to come always would fail. This is because the seeders of revolution; whether it was Mao/Lenin/Marx/The Kyhmer Rouge/Kerensky/The Weathermen/The Undergr0und/Black Panthers et al never took into the consideration the human factor. The best example I can give is the issue of housekeeping in a commune. In the beginning everyone was assigned a chore/task...i.e. cooking or cleaning the toilet. Neither tasks were ever followed through as it always fell to the person..usually a female who was disgusted by either the smell of filthy bathrooms or the lack to foodstuffs cooked. I'm not even writing about the concept to everyone loving one another because envious glances and seeking solace with someone who sounded better / looked better / was more attractive / or appeared intellectually more appealing always was the vermin in the crop. Revolution/Evolution/Theory/Ideology/Idealism/Idiolism/Idyllism/Pragmatism/Symbolism/This author writes cogently...startling....sometimes you have to put the book down and look at the times he writes of....the characters he speaks of...It is a good book...Fanaticism///Cynicism/Failure to seeing the obvious/Twisted viewpoints based on the someone's need to dominate vs somebody needing to be oppressed.....Willful ignorance vs Forcefed misinformation.....its all there. When you read this book along with Gitlin's make sure the lights are on in your reading spot because you'll hear things....and you won't know if its your ears that are playing tricks or the events occurring in your mind are being played in cerebral sense. RJH

[Kelly Weed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but painful read. Seeing the comparison between the author’s perspective as a child vs his adult understanding was heartbreaking at times (kids are so willing to try to make their crazy lives okay in their minds). I found myself being both impressed by his mother’s determination and shocked by the crazy things she did.

[Deni Honey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, Andreas capture the innocence of his child-self while telling the story of his mother through the eyes of a young Peter. The narrative brilliantly changes as he ages throughout the memoir, fitting the thoughts and feelings of a child versus a teenager versus an adult. Having traveled all throughout South America, being displaced from home-to-home, school-to-school, never having true stability and security since being kidnapped by his well-meaning revolutionary of a mother, it’s a wonder that Peter Andreas is able to write so patiently and calmly about Carol Andreas.

By the end of the book, the reader has gone on a journey of a son coming to terms with understanding his radical mother who believed in living for a revolutionary cause, anything less is deemed being a “sellout”. With Carol’s unconventional parenting style, it’s easy to see why Peter bounces back and forth from seeing her as neglectful and a “bad mother”, while also seeing her as someone who gave him everything he could ever need and experiences that he would never trade in a thousand times over for a “normal” childhood.

His mother’s diaries let him in to the psyche of Carol Andreas, in a way that she didn’t know how to do while she was alive. At the time of her death, Peter and his mother didn’t comprehend the political and social motives of one another to the full extent that would allow for peace between the two of them. It is clear that reading her diaries and writing this memoir was cathartic for Andreas. This was his coming to know, love, and ultimately forgive his mother for her shortcomings—though I’m sure he’ll never forget. Rebel Mother is a brutally honest and an at times jarring narrative, filled with love, compassion, hurt, strong convictions, radical ideas, childhood innocence, growth, and separation, ultimately leading to a illuminating path of closure for Peter. An excellent read.