Red Star Sister: Between Madness and Utopia

by Leslie Brody

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1886913153
• ISBN13: 9781886913158
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Ruminator Books
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The Who, What and Why of the Counterculture movement

This novel is the unequivocal history of both Leslie Brody, and to a larger degree the counterculture movement of the 1960?s and 1970?s. Leslie relives her experiences of many of the major events during this time period including Woodstock, the Chicago Democratic Convention, the underground high school press and the "San Francisco Peace Treaty". With utter fascination at the woman that she was before, Brody goes over her experiences with as much interest into who the girl in the picture and write the poems is. For the novice Vietnam War reader, or even one who would like to learn what the Vietnam War stood for in the protest marches, there is no better source of information than The Red Star Sister. Without first hand accounts of the actual motives of the protest movement, hippies would be smudged into history as a group full of drugs and free loving. However, this book shows the utopianism that hippies everywhere were seeking, a state that had peace and no need to attack other countries. Red Star Sister gives a breath of fresh air and reason to the hippie movement and is a must read by all people who did not go through what she has, which is roughly 99% of the population. If you are interested in reading a well-constructed and fair version of events that took place during America's hippie movement, then you must look no further than this book. However, if you ardently believe that the Vietnam War was the correct American foreign policy and the thought of the protest movement makes your stomach curl, then this book should be passed over. Either way, one cannot argue that Leslie Brody lived a truly remarkable life.

Patriotism and Passion

This is the autobiography of a feminist "hippie" from the 60's whose witty writing style portrays her as a woman who does more than blindly preach against the Vietnam War. Readers of this book will find out that she is a true American. Brody, who grows up in a Jewish family, integrates Yiddish into her dialect. As soon as I read the word "zoftig" and "vildechaya," I felt connected to her through the culture we've shared. This culture connection, by the way, is a timeless generation bridge. It was as though I understood where she was coming from because she had the same grandmother, the same self-awareness, and similar prejudice problems as many Jews know quite well. Red Star Sister, in this respect, is timeless. My favorite anecdote of the story was her experience at Woodstock. This is because I could picture my mother somewhere in the crowd, while everyone at the concert was thinking and talking about the same things- either peace, drugs, love, or absolutely nothing at all. Of course we have all read about these things in other books that are probably better publicized. But the reason why this one is so good is that she developed my trust first. Brody captures me with commonalities of religion, language, and crazy-but-thought-out actions. I would especially recommend this book to women who want to read about themselves or read what they could have done if they wanted an exciting, politically active life. This book combines the location changes of the James Bond series, the class struggles and racism issues of Their Eyes Were Watching God, a witty personal perspectives like that of Virginia Woolf, and an effective writing style like Tim O'Brien. Brody shows herself as an American with the type of patriotism we are lacking today. The passion that comes with patriotism.

A Personal Journey Through An Anxious Time

Red Star Sister promises no more than "one woman's point of view", a glimpse at a period in our shared history that was marked by turmoil and upheaval, but strife and idealism. This one point of view is more than enough to give the reader what Leslie Brody hopes for, namely a glimpse at an "often shadowy, anxious time", and through the retelling of the events therein, she hopes for herself a chance to recapture the utopian image of self and society that drew her generation together while they were being rived apart by the events of the day. Brody takes the reader through her childhood on Long Island, replete with insecurity stemming from her middle class upbringing to reprimands for her defiance and intelligence at the local public schools. Through a surprisingly personal and unflinching recounting of her teenage years, through her mother's death, her anger towards her father and the men in her academic life, and her ever increasing political awareness, Brody prepares the reader, through recollections and journal entries, for angst filled state of mind that could take a young hippie girl from Long Island to a White Panther commune in Chicago where she was trained in the art of guerilla warfare, should the ideal for society need to be defended, with force if need be. The ever pressing war in Southeast Asia translated into an intensely individual war at home, as Brody struggles to retain her idealism and even sanity as she comes to grip with her dreams clashing with reality. In the end what has been offered here is an unapologetic glimpse into the mindset of a woman who shared the life of a generation, without the recriminations or glorifications to be had within the memoirs of contemporaries, done, perhaps, as much for her own sake as that of the reader she takes with her on the journey.

Red Star Sister is Good

Leslie Brody's autobiography recounts her young life as an activist at the height of the counterculture movement, giving readers the inside scoop on the life of a radical hippie. With the body count for the Vietnam War on Cronkite as her background music, Brody leaves her home in a Long Island suburb to single-handedly save the world. She packs her red suitcase and heads into the unknown, stopping for episodes at White Panther collectives in Chicago and Ann Arbor, Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, and finally, Europe, where she hopes to attend the Vietnamese peace negotiations. Its rich detail, humor, and awareness of self and world make Red Star Sister a fascinating memoir.Brody gives readers a strong sense of the euphoria felt by radicals in the 60's and early 70's. She explains how the goal was to off the pig, and "the fashionable rhetoric encouraged kids not to trust anyone over thirty and, furthermore, to kill our parents". Adults represent the death culture, and hippies idealistically set out to recreate Woodstock all over the world, where love and community would reign over war, napalm, and lies.Brody's use of detail and allusion is effective in illustrating the counterculture atmosphere. She evokes the music of Phil Ochs and Country Joe McDonald, political role models Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung, and of course, her literary heroes Doris Lessing, Joan Didion, and Anais Nin. With enjoyable candor, she recounts her experiences with hashish, Yellow Sunshine, and free love. Even as a young person born a decade after this time period, I still get a powerful sense of what the world was like for the radicals.In the midst of revolutionary zeal, however, Brody presents herself as a character with an undeniably human side to which I can relate. She is plagued by concerns that any young woman might experience--"I would wonder if I was a coward," Brody says. She engages in free love still wondering, "Does he just like me because he can have me? Does he even think I'm pretty?... Is it counterrevolutionary to want to be pretty?" I have no problem sympathizing with Brody as she blunders through her early life.In this tension between counterculture hero and regular girl, Brody holds a naive enthusiasm that manifests itself in a passion for the romantic and the literary. She takes solace as she wanders the streets of France, broke, in the fact that "I felt, despite my discomfort, emotionally pure, careless and thoughtless, down and out, a little crazy, and awfully literary". The irony through which the older Brody frequently views her youthful romanticism adds humor to the narration and conveys a well-rounded sense of self.Brody's memoir is more outward-looking than what one might expect from an author writing for the "me generation". She admits early on that "I'm sure brats abounded as they do in every age," and presents a balanced account of her youth by describing the bad drug trips along with the good ones. Brody does not proclaim that she

Patriotism with Passion

This is the autobiography of a feminist "hippie" from the 60's whose witty writing style portrays her as a woman who does more than blindly preach against the Vietnam War. Readers of this book find out that she is a true American. Brody, who grows up in a Jewish family, integrates Yiddish into her dialect. As soon as I read the word "zoftig" and "vildechaya," I felt connected to her through the culture we've shared. This culture connection, by the way, is a timeless generation bridge. It was as though I understood where she was coming from because she had the same grandmother, the same self-awareness, and similar prejudicial problems as many Jews know quite well. Red Star Sister, in this respect, is timeless. My favorite anecdote of the story is her experience at Woodstock. This is because I could picture my mother somewhere in the crowd, while everyone at the concert was thinking and talking about the same things- peace, drugs, love, or absolutely nothing at all. Of course we have all read about these things in other books that have been better publicized. But the reason why this one is great is that she developed my trust as a reader first. Brody captures me with commonalities of religion, language, and crazy but thought-out actions. I would especially recommend this book to women who want to read about themselves or read what they could have done if they wanted an exciting, politically active life. This book combines the location changes of the James Bond series, the class struggles and racism issues of Their Eyes Were Watching God, a witty personal perspectives like that of Virginia Woolf, and an effective writing style like Tim O'Brien. Brody shows herself as an American with the type of patriotism we are lacking today. The patriotism that comes with passion.