When people ask why I decided to become a writer — and with journalism going the way it’s going, it’s certainly a valid question — I often respond that it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.
Sure, I’m being a little self-deprecating. But it’s not far from the truth: At a certain point during my high school years, English class — the chance to read, write and devour language — was really the only thing that kept me coming back every day.
Allen Ginsberg, with his fitful cries of protest about the way the nation was headed, his meandering love letters to society’s freaks and his mischievous smile in the black-and-white author photos, was among the first writers who captured my imagination. A foil to the “playboy” legacy of Jack Kerouac, he was such a messily perfect spokesman for proud weirdos, for the marginalized. He was gay, with a pot belly and a ridiculous beard. And he was so very, undeniably Jewish.
Certainly it helped that in the back of my mind there was a glimmer of a chance we were related. My maternal grandfather’s name was Ginsburg; I liked to think that, generations ago in some Polish village, my predecessors and his (and, sure, Ruth Bader’s) were sisters or cousins who all sat around making kugel together. It’s possible, right? But I digress.
I was entranced when I learned about the publication of “Howl” — at what a powerful moment it was for the First Amendment, at the notion that literature could be revolutionary. Later, my infatuation with Ginsberg’s works paved the way for a fascination with the free speech movement in Berkeley, with the radical history of the area in which I grew up.
At the same time, I was becoming aware that activism — both questioning the status quo and speaking up, no matter the cost, in the face of injustice — was a deeply embedded part of my culture. I learned about the so-called Hollywood 10, filmmakers who were blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era, often simply for having progressive leanings. (Six of the 10 were Jewish.)
I’m still learning, happily, about the more direct connections I have to Jewish muckrakers throughout history: Theresa Serber Malkiel, a cousin on my mom’s side, is written up on the Jewish Women’s Archive website for her work in labor rights at the beginning of the 20th century. She helped found a union at her garment factory, and according to many sources, she became the first woman to rise from factory work to leadership in the Socialist Party.
In 1910, a year before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire took the lives of more than 140 garment workers, she published a book called “Diary of a Shirtwaist Maker.” After the fire, the book drew widespread attention and is credited with helping to reform New York state labor laws for factory workers.
Regardless of one’s opinion on the now 2-month-old Occupy movements around the country, it’s difficult not to be struck by some of the images appearing in the daily papers and circulating on the Web. It hasn’t been surprising to watch the Jewish community take part in the protests, nor was it terribly surprising to hear that both a sukkah and an interfaith tent were among the encampments torn down in a police raid on Occupy Oakland in early November.
As I’ve read the headlines and watched the footage — particularly as things have turned ugly between police and protesters on college campuses — I find myself thinking of the conditions, some 50 and 60 years ago, in which some of my favorite writers and artists became activists almost by necessity. Apparently I’m not the only one. In October, the local Jewish writer Jonah Raskin (whose literature studies have focused on Ginsberg and that other great, loopy Jewish activist, “Yippie” leader Abbie Hoffman), gave a reading at Occupy San Francisco.
In it, he repurposed one of my favorite Ginsberg poems, “America.” Only he updated it a little. Ginsberg wrote: “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing /America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.” Raskin’s version, accounting for inflation, began “America, I gave you the best and you took the rest /America, I’m down to $5.50, October 28, 2011, Occupy SF.”
Somehow I think that old bearded weirdo — whether we’re related by blood or something else — would approve.
Emma Silvers lives in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].