Emma
by Howard Zinn
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Book Summary Information
Author: Howard ZinnEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-01
ISBN: 089608664X
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: South End Press
Book Reviews of Emma
Book Review: "We have to have a little beauty in our lives, even in the midst of the struggle." *
Summary: 5 Stars
In all honesty, I've avoided reading Zinn's "Emma" (and his "Marx in Soho") for years because my experience with literary pieces written by scholars is that they're usually didactic and lifeless. This was stupid on my part. After all, the eloquence of Zinn's You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train brought tears to my eyes on several occasions, and one of the things that makes his People's History a classic is the beauty of his style.
So reading "Emma," when I finally turned to it, was pure pleasure. The play is divided into 2 acts with 23 scenes between them. The first act tracks Emma's life up to Alexander Berkman's assassination attempt on Henry Clay Frick. The second focuses on Emma's life up to her arrest (and eventual deportation) during World War I, with special emphasis on her tumultuous love affair with Ben Reitman.
Zinn wants to pull off two things in "Emma": give the audience a good (although necessarily impressionistic) portrait of Emma Goldman the person, and also tell the audience something about her anarchist ideals and lifework. He does a good job of both, and especially manages to get across Emma's sheer love of life--"I realized my life could be...ecstatic," as she says at one point (p. 48)--that frequently set her apart from more dour, humorless fellow revolutionaries. (What might the Russian revolution have become if Lenin and Trotsky had loved life as fervently as Emma did?)
Zinn also succeeds, without being heavy-handed, in showing Emma's ongoing relevance (something he also pulls off with Marx in "Marx in Soho"). At one point in the second act, for example, Emma gives a speech on patriotism. "What is patriotism?" she asks her audience--that is, us. "Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves better, and nobler than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die to impose his superiority upon all the others. Patriotism is the nourishment of war." A member of the audience shouts in protest that "patriotism makes us a united people!" "Yes," replies Emma, "it unites us, against others!"
"Emma" is guaranteed to whet one's appetite for more, and it sent me scurrying to reread old favorites--Kropotkin, Berkman, and Emma herself--who I haven't read in ages. I'd be ecstatic if I could actually see the play performed on stage. In this day and time especially, it merits a wide audience.
_________
* Emma to Berkman, Act 1, scene 9
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