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Summary: Outlaw Woman
Review: OUTLAW WOMAN is a vivid and compelling account of the author's journey through the upheaval, hope and ultimate implosion of the 1960s. With a keen eye for detail and a crisp prose style, Dunbar-Ortiz evokes the heady combination of idealism and trauma that defined that era and transformed her from an apolitical, married college student into a notorious feminist leader and later, an underground revolutionary. This is fascinating history, and especially important for young people who are trying to make sense of the socio-political moment in America today. OUTLAW WOMAN is an honest and courageous attempt to examine and reclaim some of the history of an era that still divides and perplexes us thirty years later. A wonderful and
important read.
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Summary: Cherish this book
Review: Outlaw Woman is one of literally hundreds of books that describe the "movement" in its varied forms during the 60's and 70's, but it shines among all of them. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's honesty, courage, and commitment to self-definition and truth are a shining example of what the movement could have been and could still be.As a young gay man, this book gave me a clearer picture than any other of a conflicted, confusing time. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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Summary: radical Okie!
Review: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is from Oklahoma--a story told beautifully in her earlier volume, RED DIRT: GROWING UP OKIE. But her views, both in the 1960s and now, don't fit the Okie image. Yet, paradoxically, she would be the first to acknowledge that her Oklahoma background--poor, part Native American, a socialist grandfather--helped in some ways to shape her radicalism. (To be accurate, her radicalism probably resulted in part from reacting AGAINST her Oklahoma background.)
Dunbar-Ortiz has a remarkable ability to place the story of her life in context with "historical events" going on at the time--in this volume, the women's movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the "radical underground," etc. I recommended this book to my daughter, herself something of an activist (anti-nuclear power). She read it, loved it, and said one thing that was obvious was that Dunbar-Ortiz had kept a journal, thus enabling her to tell her story in rich detail.
She also has a remarkable ability to grab you and shake you and make you think, to make you reconsider stuff you thought you knew. I've been an Okie for 40 years, wear the label proudly, was an activist to some extent in all four major movements of the 60s (civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, environmental, women's). But I was by no means as radical, AM by no means as radical, as Dunbar-Ortiz. Which is part of why this was such a good book for me to read. You should read it too, whatever your political orientation!
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Summary: Great New Memoir Explores Sixties from Another Angle
Review: Ruxanne Dunbar-Ortiz' Outlaw Woman is a memoir of an extraordinary time in U.S. history, and it is one that doesn't get bogged down in accusation, scandal, or idealistic reverie. The roots of contemporary feminism are here. The United States war in Vietnam is here. Navive American and African American struggles are here. And other struggles that shaped generations of U.S. radicals--Cuba, South Africa, Chile, Nicaragua. Roxanne's journey through some of the ear's most important movements and events allows us to revisit those times--whatever our own position, then or now. Outlaw Woman is stark, unrelenting, honest, and evocative--of a time when a diverse subculture cared, a time that should make us proud.
Today, when fear and conformity are being thrust at us like a bludgeon, books like this remind us of who we are and that it is legitimate to struggle for justice, equality, and the retrieval of our true spirits.
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