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Police mug shot of Emma Goldman, 1901 (via)

A review of Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life by Vivian Gornick

By Bhaskar Sunkara

“The most dangerous woman in America,” dead for seven decades, lingers on. Emma Goldman’s legacy has not always seemed so secure. There was little use for her after the Bolsheviks won radical hearts in the 1920s, even less during the heady days of the post-war boom. It took a New Left that saw no tension between personal and social liberation to resurrect Goldman’s image. The appropriation was selective, but the renewed interest came with more serious historical treatments. Goldman was a quick wit, passionate lover, and talented orator. That she would’ve made fine drinking company has never been in question — her politics have been. Yet Vivian Gornick’s new biography, like many of those that came before it, is hung up on Goldman’s mystique, a mystique that a laundry-list of humanizing anecdotes does little to cut through. Goldman is assessed less as a political figure than lauded as an “incarnation” who, as the book’s subtitle says, lived “revolution as a way of life.”

That life began in misery typical of nineteenth century Russia. Trying to tame his daughter, Goldman’s father beat her with a whip. She battled with authority at the school, too, denied a character reference needed to continue her education. One teacher’s report called the twelve-year-old “a terrible child who would grow into a worse woman.” Sent to work in a glove factory, Goldman witnessed capitalist exploitation first hand. Still, it was only after a journey to America, the bleakness of proletarian life in Rochester, and a profoundly personal response to the Haymarket massacre that “Red Emma” was forged.

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