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Reviews
Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical by Jacqueline Jones
the_vegan_bookworm's review against another edition
Just couldn't get into this one!
11corvus11's review against another edition
4.0
I want to think on this before reviewing. I don't know how to talk about the book without talking about how it changed my perception of Parson's for the worse. If this book is accurate- and it seems well researched and written- Parson's has become my least favorite anarchist woman that I've learned the history of. From her refusal to identify with and include Black people in movements to her hypocritical maligning of many feminist anarchist principles. At the same time, she paved part of the way for some white women anarchists and survived hell on Earth many times over. I will likely write a longer, better review when I think more on it.
mx_mistoffolees's review against another edition
Too wide a scope, which makes it boring and hard to follow. Several hours in and I feel like its barely about Lucy Parsons herself.
mxae's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Excellent biography of a complex person in history. Didn't shy away from the complexity. Also the author makes abundantly clear the parallels to today's struggles.
inframaterialist's review against another edition
3.0
Not an especially bad book if you want to learn about Lucy Parsons but throughout the author tends to make weird little judgemental asides that come off as 'If I was her I would have been honest' or 'If I was her I would have been more polite'. The subject is no doubt a complex person, so maybe I went in expecting too shinning a picture? But I'll put it like this, if you get frustrated by radicalism as presented through the lens of liberalism, the authors tone might get on your nerves at a few points.
siria's review against another edition
4.0
Jacqueline Jones’ Goddess of Anarchy is an exploration of the life and times of a fascinating figure: Lucy Parsons, a formerly enslaved woman from the U.S. South who married a former Confederate soldier in the 1870s. Their married life was as distinctive as their marriage: they moved to Chicago where they became involved first with the socialist movement and then with anarchists, learning German in order to better communicate with the large number of German immigrants who were involved in these leftist politics. Parsons’ husband was executed after the Haymarket bombing of 1886, but she continued her career as a prolific writer and speaker on matters of anarchism, free speech, and workers’ rights.
Jones’ portrait of Parsons shows her to have been a complex person: she had rigorous convictions and passionate intelligence, but she was abrasive and hypocritical (she vociferously critiqued fellow anarchist Emma Goldman’s advocacy of free love while herself engaging in multiple extra-marital relationships). Despite her public embrace of traditional gender roles and her promotion of herself as a sorrowful widow and doting mother, she had her son forceably committed to an insane asylum for the rest of his life and seems to have never visited him there once. Parsons gave fiery speeches in support of workers’ rights but determinedly ignored the needs of Black workers and vehemently denied her own racial identity.
There’s much to grapple with here in terms of Parsons’ legacy, and how to balance an admiration for her activism and her critique of respectability politics with a critique of how she could often tip over the line of being an ideologue. How do we fairly provide an accounting of the career of a Black woman who was courageous and forthright but not ultimately particularly likeable? It’s a thorny question. Jones, I think, is even-handed in her assessment of Parson, her life, and her career.
Jones’ portrait of Parsons shows her to have been a complex person: she had rigorous convictions and passionate intelligence, but she was abrasive and hypocritical (she vociferously critiqued fellow anarchist Emma Goldman’s advocacy of free love while herself engaging in multiple extra-marital relationships). Despite her public embrace of traditional gender roles and her promotion of herself as a sorrowful widow and doting mother, she had her son forceably committed to an insane asylum for the rest of his life and seems to have never visited him there once. Parsons gave fiery speeches in support of workers’ rights but determinedly ignored the needs of Black workers and vehemently denied her own racial identity.
There’s much to grapple with here in terms of Parsons’ legacy, and how to balance an admiration for her activism and her critique of respectability politics with a critique of how she could often tip over the line of being an ideologue. How do we fairly provide an accounting of the career of a Black woman who was courageous and forthright but not ultimately particularly likeable? It’s a thorny question. Jones, I think, is even-handed in her assessment of Parson, her life, and her career.
hopebrasfield's review against another edition
3.0
(Trying very hard here to remember that I'm not reviewing Lucy Parson's life, but rather this book that happens to be about her life.)
Do I feel like I have a better understanding of who Lucy Parsons was, what she did, and her place within a larger movement as a result of having read this book? Absolutely!
Did I have to read "between the lines" to get to that better understanding? I sure did! As Teka Lo writes for Public Intellectuals, "This book is a middle class pathologization of working class people." Jones "cites already known facts and then decorates those facts with digs on her manner of dress, questions of the sincerity of her motives, and the policing of how she lived as a Black person" (https://www.publicintellectuals.org/lucy-parsons/).
That about sums it up for me. Happy to know more about Lucy Parsons, but disappointed I went with this source before others.
Do I feel like I have a better understanding of who Lucy Parsons was, what she did, and her place within a larger movement as a result of having read this book? Absolutely!
Did I have to read "between the lines" to get to that better understanding? I sure did! As Teka Lo writes for Public Intellectuals, "This book is a middle class pathologization of working class people." Jones "cites already known facts and then decorates those facts with digs on her manner of dress, questions of the sincerity of her motives, and the policing of how she lived as a Black person" (https://www.publicintellectuals.org/lucy-parsons/).
That about sums it up for me. Happy to know more about Lucy Parsons, but disappointed I went with this source before others.