Dirtbag
Essays
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
The victories and failures of millennial socialism, as told by the writer who lived it.
Amber A'Lee Frost came to New York City from her home state of Indiana as a working class activist (and member of then-unknown Cold War hold-out, Democratic Socialists of America), just before the first major movement for economic justice of the millennium, Occupy Wall Street. Of course, Occupy went bust, then Bernie Sanders went boom, and she threw herself into the campaign with everything she had. Frost has been one of the foremost evangelists of labor and socialist politics ever since, as a writer, activist, former staff and lifetime member of DSA, and cohost of the wildly popular Chapo Trap House podcast.
Dirtbag is the much-anticipated debut from one of the most engaging and insightful writers of her generation. This book is more than a political memoir; it is a chapter in the story of the only movement that has a chance to reshape our world into something better. It captures an electric time of thrilling triumphs, stupid decisions, friendships and rivalries new and old, struggle, joy, setbacks, and heartbreak, all with magnetic prose, remarkable candor, and unflappable humor.
Throughout it all, Frost burned the candle at both ends, relentlessly campaigning for socialism and the labor movement, from the American Midwest to the British rust belt, and rallying the troops with her brothers-in-arms as a self-described propagandist for the glorious cause of the workers movement (and somehow, always finding moments for plenty of reckless adventuring). The time was a brutal calamity of work and play, with all of the late nights, hard fights, and joyous camaraderie powered by the hope and the faith that maybe, somehow, this time, socialism could actually win.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chapo Trap House podcaster Frost debuts with an irreverent and acerbic take on the contemporary American socialist movement from the inside of the "dirtbag left" (a term Frost coined). In the book's first section, she recounts her working-class upbringing in Indiana with a single mother; part two covers her history with the Democratic Socialists of America and the Occupy Wall Street movement. In part three, Frost ascribes her support of Bernie Sanders's 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns to seeing "an opportunity for a righteous underdog to maybe right some of the wrongs in our country," and links her penchant for "florid storytelling" to such influences as Hunter S. Thompson and Vivian Gornick. Throughout, Frost is cocksure in tone and style, even when she tiptoes into uncomfortable territory (she bristles at the capitalization of Black—"as if all Black people hail from Blackistan or something"). Still, she admits early on that a "book about a millennial socialist's adventures in left politics" is "hardly reinventing the wheel," and describes the self-doubt she felt "the moment I signed a book contract for a ‘memoir' "—one that was "difficult to start writing and even more difficult to finish." While she's often funny, intelligent company, her uncertainty lends the proceedings an air of defensiveness. This will please Frost's admirers, but is unlikely to win over the naysayers.
