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Living For Change An Autobiography Grace Lee Boggs |
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A remarkable life on the American Left. Grace Lee Boggs was raised in New York City during a time when her father was not allowed to buy land for their home because he was Chinese. Educated at Barnard and Bryn Mawr, Boggs was in her twenties when radical politics beckoned, and she was inspired to become a revolutionary focusing on the black community. Living for Change is a sweeping account of the life of an untraditional radical from the end of the thirties, through the cold war, the civil rights era, and the rise of Black Power, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers to the present efforts to rebuild our crumbling urban communities. This fascinating autobiography traces the story of a woman who transcended class and racial boundaries to pursue her passionate belief in a better society. During her early years as an activist in New York, Boggs began a twenty-year friendship and collaboration with C. L. R. James, the brilliant and influential West Indian Marxist to whom she devotes a revelatory chapter of this book. In 1953, she moved to Detroit where, she writes, "radical history had been made and could be made again." It was also the home of James Boggs, an African American auto worker (and later author and revolutionary theoretician) who would become one of the movement's freshest and most persuasive voices, as well as Grace's husband. Beginning with their work together on the newsletter Correspondence, Grace and James formed the core of a network that over the years would include Malcolm X, Lyman Paine, Ping Ferry, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Kwame Nkrumah, Stokely Carmichael, and inner-city youth. Rich in the personalities and anecdotes of twentieth-century progressive activism, Living for Change is an involving and inspiring look at a remarkable woman who continues to dedicate her life to social justice. "Grace Lee Boggs has made a fundamental difference in keeping alive the traditions of the struggles for freedom and democracy." —Cornel West "More than a deeply moving memoir, this is a book of revelation. Grace Lee Boggs, Chinese American, middle class, highly educated, discovers through her encounters with remarkable rebels, blue collars as well as philosophers, where the body is buried: who is doing what to whom in our society. It is an adventure that is truly liberating." —Studs Terkel "It seems to me that the life of Grace Lee Boggs has been an exercise of will. Through sheer will, without waiting for social conditions to come around and without waiting to explore her identity, she turned her back on who she was and barged into new territories. She was a woman who barged into men's territory; she was a Chinese who barged into black territory; she was an intellectual who barged into workers territory." —from a letter from Louis Tsen "Throught these pages walk causes, gatherings, confrontations, movements, and the men and women who made them: workers, and students, and committees of the People; Christians, Black Muslims, Black Panthers, Labor Unions; C.L.R. James. Rev. Cleage, Rev. Cleveland, Coleman Young, Malcolm and Martin; artists, musicians, poets, actors, strikers, and seekers of revolution." —from the foreword by Ossie Davis “Living for Change is a work of art, both lyrically written and deceptively powerful. This book will take you on a journey through a fascinating life.” —Detroit MetroTimes “A Chinese American who has devoted her life to the black liberation struggle, a Ph. D. in philosophy who has soldiered for decades in countless grassroots movements, a New York child of immigrants who has become a self-described ‘griot’ in Detroit’s inner city, Boggs defies categorization.” —Village Voice “Grace Lee Bogg’s autobiography is an excellent addition to the growing body of work which attempts to offer the present generation a coherent and synthesized vision of past struggles and transcend black/white prison. In her memoir Living for Change: An Autobiography, Grace Lee Boggs enlightens the reader on her fifty-five years of political and social activism, from World War II to the present.” —The Gaither Reporter "A remarkable memoir." —Journal of Women’s History "A brilliant book. Grace is a living example of the visionary, the dreamer-thinker, who creates possibilities through critical revolutionary activity as a moment of counter-hegemony. Living for Change is a great read, honest, brave, and imaginative." —New Political Science “I was not prepared for the power of the memoir that Grace Boggs has written. Here in simple, matter-of-fact words, she records the story of a generation that came of age in the 1930s and was swept up by the idealism and energy of the international communist movement.” —Sunflower Grace Lee Boggs is a first-generation Chinese American who has been a speaker, writer, and movement activist in the African American community for fifty-five years. 344 pages | 30 black-and-white photos | 5 7/8 x 9 | 1998 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword by Ossie Davis 1. East Is East—Or Is It? Notes |
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$19.95 Paper