My Red Blood (2009)

My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement by Alix Dobkin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like to come up with one word reviews for plays I see and thought perhaps I could translate that to the books I read. Unfortunately the first word I thought of for this book was 'pedestrian'.

On the other hand, the author and I shared a generation and community. It's not the first time I've realized that others (Patti Smith's Just Kids) made braver, more interesting choices.

Although it felt like a slog sometimes, I finished the book and actually came to vicariously enjoy Alix Dobkin's tale of growing up communist and becoming a lesbian. Not knowing her music put me at a disadvantage, but I greatly enjoyed remembering the folksong scene, the beginning of the women's movement, civil rights, the special places in Philadelphia she mentions, and other relics of the time period as well as the famous people she met and knew.

Perhaps I should change the one word review to 'transformative'.

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