Outside Voices
A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Berkeley, 1972: a hotbed of creativity where painters, filmmakers, musicians, and writers inspire a young poet.
NYC Big Book Award: Winner in New Adult Non-fiction
NYC Big Book Award: Distinguished Favorite in Women’s Issues
International Book Award Winner in U.S. History
Literary Titan Winner
Finalist in the San Francisco Bookfest
Runner Up in the New York City Bookfest
Second-wave feminism, inspired by Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan is swelling into a tsunami. Women are joining together to change power dynamics in politics, the home, and the workplace.
On election day, Joan Gelfand casts her vote for George McGovern and boards a plane from New York to California. With one introduction to a woman musician, Joan’s journey to become a writer is born. Embraced by a thriving women’s community of artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and writers, Joan is encouraged to find her voice.
Mentored by paradigm-changing writers, Joan finds the courage to face her darkest fears through poetry and art, mining the trauma she experienced after losing her father and questioning her Jewish identity. Reminiscent of Paris in the twenties, Greenwich Village in the sixties, and Berlin in the eighties, Berkeley in the seventies was the “it” city of America.
Outside Voices reports the ups and downs of finding one’s way as an artist, living with a women’s band, forging an independent Jewish identity, founding a women’s restaurant, and becoming a published writer and songwriter while exploring the limits of sexuality and spirituality. The story includes road trips to music festivals in the woods, beaches in Mexico, concerts in Southern California, and a retreat in the Pacific Northwest.
A triumphant story of determination and will, Outside Voices is a backstage look at the women’s movement that sets the stage for decades of change. This book is a firsthand look at how the power of community emboldened innovation, social change, and self-discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and activist Gelfand (Extreme) delivers an engrossing recollection of the protest scene in 1970s Berkeley, Calif. Arriving in the city from New York in 1972, when she was 18, Gelfand sought direction and healing while struggling with her father's sudden death. Almost immediately, she was introduced to a network of women artists who welcomed her with open arms and encouraged her to pursue writing. Coming from a family that held fast to traditional gender roles, Gelfand was thrilled by the women's intellectual and sexual freedom. She recalls with wide-eyed wonder her experiences dining for the first time in a women-run restaurant, attending a writers' retreat in the "great Northwest," touring with her friends' protest band, and participating in political rallies that the rest of the country was watching on television. Along the way, Gelfand processed the trauma of her father's death, found her authorial voice, and eventually grew tired of the Berkeley scene's productive chaos. She decided to leave in 1975—while she was in the middle of an acid trip—so she could "bring the war home" and "be own person." Though nostalgia creeps in, Gelfand mostly conjures the period with clear eyes, giving flesh and blood to a scene so well-covered it can feel mummified. This stirring account from the front lines of the feminist movement enchants.
