Why am I passionate about this?
I'm fascinated by the potential of teenagers. The teen years are full of passion and energy. It's a time of seeing injustice and recognizing inequality. For some young people, it becomes imperative to make the world a better place. My maternal grandparents joined the Communist Party when they were teenagers. They were deeply committed to making the world a better place, but it was a commitment that affected all of their decisions. They were saving the worldâwhat happened with their children was of little consequence. Therefore the books on my list reflect my interest in teenage radicals, as well as the fate of children who grow up under a system of radical beliefs.
Amanda's book list on making you a teenage radical
Why did Amanda love this book?
Cathy Wilkerson was one of The Weather Underground. She became notorious because The Weather Underground was using her fatherâs townhouse in Greenwich Village when a bomb was accidentally detonated, killing three people and destroyed the building.
What I love about this book is that it is by a woman in the movement. Most of the people who have written about The Weatherman and the various radical movements of the sixties are men and they are writing from a very different perspective. The women in the movement were dealing not only with their desire to end the war and overturn the government, but with pushing for a feminist revolution amongside their male comrades.
Wilkerson reflects on her radicalization as a teenager, on joining the movement, and on her struggles within the movement. The book makes dynamic reading for anyone interested in social change.
1 author picked Flying Close to the Sun as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Flying Close to the Sun is the stunning memoir of a white middle-class girl from Connecticut who became a member of the Weather Underground, one of the most notorious groups of the 1960s. Cathy Wilkerson, who famously escaped the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, here wrestles with the
legacy of the movement, at times finding contradictions that many others have avoided: the absence of womenâs voices then, and in the retelling; the incompetence and the egos; the hundreds of bombs detonated in protest which caused little loss of life but which were also ineffective in fomenting revolution. In searching for newâŚ