Review: Red Star Sister : Between Madness and Utopia

Red Star Sister : Between Madness and Utopia by Leslie Brody
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Leslie Brody’s book is an autobiography about her life as a hippie teenager in the late sixties-early seventies. In 1965 at the age of 13 her mother died which drastically changed her life. At the time she was very engaged in music, being one of those screaming girls for the Beatles. But as she grew up the Vietnam War and the anti-war protests become her central focus.

During high school Brody joined school newspapers and tried to get her poetry or other feminist articles published in underground papers. She worked as staff at one paper, but was more a secretary and the boys never seemed to want to publish her writings. Also, during her high school years she attended the Woodstock music festival, although her experience was nothing like what I would have expected. She was on the fringes and spent the rainy days inside a car.

After high school she wanted to roam more and be more of a pollical agent and by fluke, picked up while hitch-hiking, joined The White Panthers. This was the first I’ve heard of this group, of course knowing about the Black Panthers. The White Panthers completely supported the Black Panthers while their agendas may have differed slightly as the White Panthers were very involved in trying to end the Vietnam War.

Instead of going to college, essentially phoning home to say Dad I’m not going, Leslie continues to be an activist. Eventually she goes to Europe and becomes a backpacker. She had a plan to go to Paris and talk to the Vietnam delegation about ending the war. However, before going to Paris she spent a lot of time in Amsterdam and very slowly traveled to France.

Eventually she ended up in the hospital with sores all over her body and spent a lot of time recovering. Perhaps her madness was the expectations of what she could accomplish with ending a war, but her efforts seemed haphazard.

The descriptions of her experiences of anti-war efforts and working with underground newspapers were very detailed. Brody had nearly continuously kept journals at the time, which helped serve as her memory along with some other artifacts she kept. A few times she writes about her recollections differing from what she wrote, which she ponders briefly upon. At times she uses unexpected words which made for better reading.


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