Randall, Margaret

Coming Home: Peace Without Complacency

ISBN: 0931122570
Albuquerque, NM: West End Press, 1990. First Trade Softcover Edition. Softcover. "Born in New York City in 1936, Margaret Randall left the United States in 1961 and lived in several Latin American countries for the next 23 years. While in Mexico in the late sixties, she acquired Mexican citizenship in an effort to help support her family. When she returned to the United States in 1984, she applied for U.S. residency. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), invoking the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, attempted to deport her due to the political nature of her writings. She fought the deportation order for five years, until finally in the summer of 1989 the Board of Immigrant Appeals rule that she had never lost her American citizenship...She has written this essay to deal with 'the feelings, as well as the history of my struggle for freedom of expression.'" Though on the surface it seems Margaret Randall left New York a little early--taking off as she did at the dawn of the Mimeograph Revolution as poets and artists influenced by the original Beat enclave of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso began to act on their aspirations--Randall was still very much at the center of this cultural ferment at home while taking on analogous responsibilites abroad. From Mexico she published the great "El Corno Emplumado," or The Plumed Horn, a literary journal which frequently featured the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Clayton Eshleman, and Fielding Dawson among its contributors. Aside from "revolutionary" literary concerns, Randall is an overlooked political voice among writers labeled "Feminist," as she was among the very first to cast her pen's pervasive glance over that expansive topic. She began this work in the 1960s and continued with projects including sociopolitical histories of Cuban and Nicaraguan women, among many other globe-spanning inquiries. Her work has continuously intersected with an analysis of how and where feminism intersects--or fails to intersect--with revolutionary leftist movements throughout history. It is surprising that her work is not more spoken of or studied today, given the contemporary sociopolitical climate and still-rallying modern liberal movement(s). Book in very good condition with minute rubbing to front, back covers; slight shelf-wear at all fine edges; bump to bottom right-hand corner of front cover. Very Good. [Item #3066]

Price: $25.00