Two Strange Moments with Writer Joan Gelfand

Posted on by suki
The Babblery
The Babblery
Two Strange Moments with Writer Joan Gelfand
Loading
/

Writer Joan Gelfand’s life so far has been bookended by what she refers to as “strange moments.” As a teenager, she left New York City for the allure of the Berkeley Women’s Movement, a time when lesbians were forming their own radical community and forging a new way for American women to live. Now Joan finds herself in another “strange moment,” when as a grandmother with a long, successful writing career she finds herself moving away from writing and back to activism.

Joan’s memoir, Outside Voices, covers those three years in Berkeley, set against the traumatic loss of her father and her mother’s struggle to nurture her own children. In vivid detail, Joan’s memoir brings us back to a time when women who had grown up within well-defined boundaries were for the first time seeing new, uncharted horizons. It was a point in time when a group of women could live in a “falling down house” and write poetry, make music, and define their own meaning.

In the interview, we explore those years and then use them to reflect on today. There are some parallels: the Internet has given us freedoms that are changing the way we all live, much as women grasped that moment in the seventies to redefine American life. But there are also challenges, and we end by exploring Joan’s recommitment to social justice—albeit this time from a radically different point of view. [Click for transcript]

Mentioned in this episode:

Music:

“Take the Time” and “The Bloods” were performed by The Berkeley Women’s Music Collective.

Please leave feedback!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Two Strange Moments with Joan Gelfand

Two Strange Moments with Writer Joan Gelfand

[00:00:25] Joan Gelfand: I think in the seventies, maybe people didn’t know what hit them. I think now we need to be all together, men, women, all on the same page.

[00:00:40] Voiceover – Suki: Writer Joan Gelfand’s memoir, Outside Voices, is about a short but very important period of her life. Three years in the women’s movement of early 1970s Berkeley. Set against stories of her New York childhood, Joan writes about the idealism, passion and disillusionment of the era in vital detail.

[00:01:04] Joan Gelfand: Hi Suki. My name is Joan Gelfand and, uh, I live in San Francisco. I’m a writer and a mother and, um, a business person. I started my writing career a long time ago, and I have, uh, seven published books, across several genres. I have three collections of poetry, a novel, a book for writers, a book of short stories, and now my most recent memoir.

[00:01:38] Voiceover – Suki: Outside Voices is about a time long ago, but it resonates with today in surprising ways. In this conversation. We’ll talk about that time in Berkeley, but also about the life of a writer, the way all of our lives have changed and of course, the fights for social justice that continue today. We start in 1972 as Joan, who had just cast her first vote in a presidential election, steps out of a plane at SFO.

Memoir: Outside Voices

[00:02:02] Joan Gelfand: The memoir is actually two braided stories. Um, one is about arriving in Berkeley at the height of second wave feminism, and I was a very young pre-college, aspiring poet and very shy about even entertaining the idea of being a writer. And by landing smack into this community of artists, painters, writers, musicians, I was given the support and I would say honestly, a platform to pursue my writing and to get it out.

[00:02:49] And that was the pivotal experience in my life. If I hadn’t landed in that community at that time, I don’t think I would’ve had the confidence to move forward, um, as a poet and a writer. And so the book talks about that developing as an artist, also the political community that I was in. And it’s also a story of, uh, loss because I lost my father at a very young age.

[00:03:21] I was 11 and, um, kind of trying to find my way. Through the world, uh, with, with that loss. Yeah, so it’s a lot about identity and kind of landing, landing somewhere.

[00:03:38] Suki Wessling: Mm-hmm. So do you remember what first led you at such a young age before you were even going to college to just, well. Tell us where you were living and, and how you decided to just turn up in Berkeley.

[00:03:56] Joan Gelfand: Well, remember, 1972, we’d been through a few years of the sixties, so a lot of us were pretty empowered and kind of, how would I say, up for an adventure. I had read, you know, Jack Kerouac on the road. I was a young, kind of adventurous spirit, but the truth was. Well, and you know, California held of course mystique for everyone.

[00:04:27] And, um, I was living in New York at that time, of course, with my family. And, uh, now you might call it a gap year where, you know, you say to a kid, okay, do what you want. But I told my family, okay, I’m coming. I’m going to California for three months. I’ll be right back. And, uh, that turned into the rest of my life. So, um, and part of that was through being in this community that was so amazing and finding myself, uh, really feeling like I came into myself, being in Berkeley.

[00:05:11] Suki Wessling: Mm-hmm. So how much did you know about what was happening in Berkeley when you arrived there?

[00:05:17] Joan Gelfand: So not that much. Of course there was the general media of, you know, well, honestly, I was a Grateful Dead fan, so I knew the Grateful Dead were from the Bay Area. I was also, uh, friendly with a friend of my sister’s who had moved to Mill Valley, and she just came back and just sang the praises of the Bay Area. You can go to community college, you can, you know, do this. It’s so gorgeous. You can do that. And so I said, okay, I’m gonna go for three months and, and see what happens.

[00:05:51] The idea that the, that there was a lively feminist movement out there was very compelling. So I wasn’t nervous at all. I was up for an adventure. I had lived in Israel for six months before I went to California, also in pursuit of kind of a socialist dream. Uh, you know, I kind of grew up in that era where we were very anti-corporate, anti-capitalist. You know, I was just kind of like, oh, I’d say really, I was of my generation, you know, of people who were definitely searching for alternative ways of, of living. Uh, could we live without having a nine to five job for 40 years before we got to, you know, get some freedom? And the truth is, I did create a life that gave me some more flexibility than let’s say my parents ever had. Um, so it, yeah, no, I, I, I, I was fearless.

[00:07:02] Suki Wessling: How did you end up getting into this group of women that you ended up being part of and, and how, what were, what was your first experience like there?

[00:07:13] Joan Gelfand: You know, I always think this is so interesting ’cause you trace back. So I had gone to summer school in New York because I was on a mission to graduate high school or I was gonna drop out. I mean, high school was just the most boring placeholder. So I went to summer school so I could graduate in January instead of June with my class. And in summer school I met a woman who introduced me to another woman. And this woman had gone to Bard, was an aspiring painter, wanted to go to Cal Arts and had an introduction to one person in Berkeley. So we arrived in Berkeley, we had a place to stay, and then we went to meet this woman who she had been connected with, who was a musician, playing in a band called The Red Star Singers with Bonnie Lockhart, who was the daughter of Malvina Reynolds, who was already famous as a folk singer, because of her song, Little Boxes.

[00:08:21] And she was very politically active. Red Star Singers was very, were very political, and this Nancy was so warm and so welcoming. And that was the beginning because she lived in a house of all these women artists. And I, if I tell you, I was just awestruck and blown away, like, oh my God, you actually call yourself an artist, you know?

[00:08:53] And, and it was just a beautiful thing and it just, I was just one of these situations in life that just flowed, like I met her and then I met more people and I met writers, and I met poets, and they supported me and mentored me. It was just amazing.

Becoming a writer

[00:09:11] Suki Wessling: Mm-hmm. You said in the book that you really aspired to be a poet, but you hadn’t really written very much. Um, what was it like to declare yourself I am a poet, and then start writing?

[00:09:26] Joan Gelfand: I had started to write in high school, I was writing a lot of poetry in when I was in Israel on this kibbutz, and I think there was, and it’s in the book, there’s this pivotal moment where this woman says, “You’re a poet. Type your poems. Like, take yourself seriously.” Which was the last thing I was ready to do because I wasn’t raised to take myself seriously.

[00:09:54] One thing that’s in the book too, that was, uh, there’s a statement that writers often refer to, which is, we don’t write to kind of explain, we write to understand ourselves. And in that book, I realized that, I had been raised in a household of women that were not supportive, that were not, did not have my back, that were not going to help me get on my path to life.

[00:10:24] And then I got into this situation in Berkeley where it was like, all we wanted was for each other to be the most powerful, best version. I mean, what a piece of luck, you know, to be in that situation where that was all we were doing was, oh, you’re a songwriter. Oh, you’re a pianist. Oh, you’re a painter. Go for it.

[00:10:49] And everybody was supporting each other. It was just, you know, I, I don’t wanna over idealize it too much. Of course there were, you know, you know, various different, you know, tensions, but I’m giving you the overall picture.

[00:11:06] Voiceover – Suki: Writer Joan Gelfand’s memoir alternates between chapters of her childhood after her father died, when her mother struggled to mother her own children, and the Berkeley Women’s Movement of the seventies, when women supported each other. I asked her to reflect on the conditions that had led her mother to lack the skills to raise her daughters.

[00:11:25] Joan Gelfand: My mother lost her mother when she was two. She was not raised in a happy, functional home. I would just say the older I get, the more I realize how clueless she was about how to create a life. And, she was stamped down. She wanted to be an artist. It was the end of the depression. Her father was like, no way. We’re getting a skill here. and I think she had a lot of anger and a lot of frustration of how small her life was. And so I come along and I’m a feminist and a rabble-rouser with big ambitions. I think she didn’t really know how to manage it, and she didn’t have resources to know how the world worked. Like, one of the harshest truths about me growing up was that as a child of a single mother, I could have gone to any college I wanted to, I could have gotten grants, I could have gotten scholarships. I didn’t have any guidance. My mother didn’t guide me. Nobody guided me. You know, my mother was just not, did not have the life she wanted. And so the idea of me having the life I wanted was not high on her agenda.

[00:13:00] I mean, mothers and daughters are complicated. My daughter, I raised her in the Bay Area. I think I raised my daughter in heaven. Where’s she living? And I’m Jewish. Berlin. She met a guy, he said, come to Berlin for a year. Same thing with California. And she’s there and she loves it. And, you know, everybody’s got their path, right?

[00:13:25] And it’s complicated, ’cause here I am kind of saying, I think it’s time for you to come home. I don’t like this. And, and you know, I had to work that kind of stuff out with my mom. Eventually, my mother came to live in California, so our family was reunited.

[00:13:43] Voiceover – Suki: Joan stumbled into a life in California that she didn’t expect. She ended up living in a house she refers to as the falling down house with the women who would go on to be known as the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective. Well known in their community, they ended up recording with Olivia Records, another famous offspring of the women’s movement.

[00:14:02] Joan Gelfand: We all lived together and they started a band. Now that was huge because they were totally famous in the women’s community, and I was living with them. They took one of my poems, recorded it. Here I was 19 years old. I was way in over my head, you know, like, having a song recorded, I, I kind of wasn’t ready for that. I was very shy about it. I think there’s a piece in the book where I say, you know, growing up in New York, art was like something huge and untouchable that was out in the world that had nothing to do with lived reality.

[00:14:45] Coming to California, everything was so grassroots. Oh, you can start a band? Oh, you can get published? Oh, you, you know, all these things that on the East Coast seemed so out of my reach were very much in our milieu, you know, and it was awesome, you know, people were, like I said, becoming their best selves and, and, and blossoming with their talents. It was just, I mean, that’s why it says on the back of the book, it was like, it was a bit of Paris in the twenties, you know, everybody was doing interesting things and kind of getting attention and notoriety.

Body image

[00:15:31] Suki Wessling: What I read as, as being a big part of what happened was this sense of body consciousness that you had. Um, there was a painter who wanted to paint you, and I think that a lot of women will really relate to this idea. How did you feel about your body at that time and how did this experience change your perception of your body?

[00:15:58] Joan Gelfand: I’ve always had a lot of, um, issues around having breasts not being skinny, having hips. You know, I, I, maybe I wanted to be a boy in some way, but I was one of these people that definitely had a hard time accepting, okay, I am in this woman’s body. And so when she wanted to paint me, I was kind of mortified, but she was so body positive and I got through that situation and, um, you know, it, it was just another building block of confidence that, you know, yes, we’re women. We don’t all look the same, we’re embodied. Let’s be, uh, open to each other’s, you know, whatever body you’re in. and so, you know, here I am in my adult life, and of course I feel fine about my body, you know. But yeah, it was very pivotal.

Sexuality and separatism

[00:17:04] Voiceover – Suki: Joan writes that initially she experienced a sexual awakening in this community of women. But as she got near the end of her time in the women’s movement, she noticed that she wasn’t as ready to commit to it as other women were doing.

[00:17:17] Joan Gelfand: There was kind of an unspoken edict in this feminist community that if you were really a feminist, that you were sexual with other women. I think from a younger age, maybe I had a pro, I did have a proclivity toward being bisexual. There was no question about that.

[00:17:41] I, I found women intriguing and attractive. But I also had boyfriends and felt very comfortable with them. And in the book I talk about how, as the movement kind of got a little bit more radicalized, uh, it kind of became clear, well, just to be very blunt, people became separatists.

[00:18:07] People who had been my close friends. My musician friends were like, no men, no men allowed in the house. No men friends, no men. And then that really, uh, triggered some soul searching for me because I, that wasn’t the life I wanted to live. I had male friends that were like my brothers. I had family, I, I wasn’t about to renounce anybody.

[00:18:38] And so then I started to realize, hmm, this isn’t my lifestyle. It, it was a challenge because I had been very enmeshed with the community, but as it became more stringent and structured and rules, uh, it didn’t work for me.

[00:18:55] I think moving out of that house, one of the women had already moved out and I was living with the woman from Portland and I was just like, I need to regroup. And I went and lived on my own and I was in college and my life just changed. I just met different people, started writing more seriously. The, the group that I was in definitely kind of, you know, fizzled out a little bit. The band kind of fizzled out, so, you know, things changed.

[00:19:36] Voiceover – Suki: You are listening to the Babblery’s interview with writer Joan Gelfand. When we return,

[00:19:40] Joan Gelfand: So I’m kind of like, I’m done. I’m, I’m not gonna do this anymore. Uh, it’s too complicated. I just don’t wanna fight Goliath.

Segment 2: From revolution to career

[00:20:15] Voiceover – Suki: This is your host Suki Wessling. Writer Joan Gelfand landed in California in the midst of a burgeoning women’s movement and living in a falling down house with a group of women musicians, she experienced an awakening about her own abilities. For someone with that background, her books of poetry are not a surprise. But sticking out on her list of publications is a book that appears to be fully antithetical to the movement that nurtured her. She says that her business instinct served her well as a writer, and she wanted to share that with other writers in you can be a winning writer. So I asked her to talk about how she ended up in the business world and what she learned there.

A different career track

[00:21:07]

[00:21:10] Joan Gelfand: I didn’t realize that a common track for a writer would’ve been to get my master’s, my PhD, teach. I could have easily gone that track, but I always, and maybe this is because I grew up in insecure circumstances, I never wanted to be challenged around money issues.

[00:21:39] I, I, the idea of risking not making a good living was you talk about vulnerable. That was my soft, that was my spot of vulnerability. I did not wanna give up, the idea of earning a good living for my poetry. You know, I, I, I had my priorities pretty clear, and so I just steal myself to kind of sublimate my artist self.

[00:22:13] And so the, the career was hard for me because I was always writing and I always was yearning to be back in that, in that life where I had been seen as a writer. But I also needed to pay the rent and not only pay the rent, have nice clothes, eat in restaurants. I mean, I just, this is just how I was wired.

[00:22:41] I needed to have kind of a, a middle class lifestyle, you might say. And so, um, I persevered. I just did it for 20 years, you know. And, um, I was actually pretty successful and,

[00:23:00] Suki Wessling: what were you doing?

[00:23:01] Joan Gelfand: well, I worked in advertising and then I worked in corporate sales. And I had a talent for it, you know, I was good with people, I was successful.

[00:23:16] Um, and yet, as I said, I’m, I’m, you have to picture it. I’m just constantly yearning for more time, you know, for my artistic life. And finally, you know, I meet my husband and he’s a tech guy, and he’s like, who needs this job? Go do your artist’s life. And so that was unbelievable. You know, that was like, yeah, that really changed my life.

[00:23:48] Suki Wessling: Uhhuh, how did you meet him?

[00:23:50] Joan Gelfand: He’s was my best friend’s cousin

[00:23:55] Suki Wessling: It’s all

[00:23:56] Joan Gelfand: who, who had gotten, you know, dumped. Uh, and, and I was in a breakup situation, so we were just open to meeting each other.

[00:24:07] Suki Wessling: It’s interesting to, to look at what young people are going through now, especially with so many of them not having a place of work where they meet people and they make connections. And that was, you know, similar to how I met my husband so.

[00:24:24] Joan Gelfand: Yeah. Yeah.

Motherhood and marriage

[00:24:26] Suki Wessling: Yeah. So connections.

[00:24:28] Joan Gelfand: How I met my best friend was actually in a mother’s group. I had my baby while I was living with another woman. And you know, I didn’t know any other moms. So this woman was putting together mother’s groups in Berkeley. And I met this woman who became my best friend. We raised our kids together and, uh, her, I met her cousin.

[00:24:52] Yeah.

[00:24:53] Suki Wessling: Is there a story behind you were living with another woman and you had a baby, so how did that happen? You didn’t innovate the, the two egg, um, um, union?

[00:25:07] Joan Gelfand: No, no, no, no, no. Uh, well, the truth is, I, I, my, my partner was pretty open-minded and said, and my, a friend of mine knew I wanted to have a baby and said, well, I have someone who’s interested to help you out. And my partner said, go sleep with him. I slept with him one time and I had a baby.

[00:25:32] Suki Wessling: Wow. And

[00:25:34] Joan Gelfand: So, you know, I’m just have been very lucky in this life.

[00:25:38] Suki Wessling: yeah. So, um, where, where was this in, in terms of your career? Was this during your career?

[00:25:46] Joan Gelfand: I had left a job because I knew that I was at that place where I was kind of ready for a change and I knew I wanted to pursue having a baby. I had some money, so just was in a transition in my work career and I just took a, a couple years off, had the baby, and then went back and back to work.

Being an artist is a full-time job

[00:26:10] Suki Wessling: So in this career where you’re not able to feed your artist self, you did learn some things because we’ll get to a book you wrote soon, but what did you learn? What did you take away from this?

[00:26:25] Joan Gelfand: You know, I learned that being an artist was kind of a full-time job and that a lot of the poets that I was meeting, because I would go to poetry readings or hear about something and meet people, and I learned that, you know, if you really wanna succeed, or, you know, get your name out there, get your work out there, it was quite a bit of work and that it wasn’t gonna be in the late eighties or early nineties like it was in the seventies.

[00:27:05] You know, a lot of people that you’ll talk to who were artists in the seventies talk about, oh yes, we got published because your friend had a magazine. Oh yes, we got published because some women started a publishing company. It was just a different world. Then you come to the late eighties, nineties and it’s like, oh, I’m gonna have to work at this.

[00:27:28] You know? So when I got the opportunity in, in the, uh, late nineties to do this, I knew that I was gonna have to really hunker down and treat it like a full-time job. And that was really something that I think differentiated me from a lot of other writers, was that because of the business background, I was used to rejection.

[00:27:53] I was used to, uh, how do I say, for lack of another word, hustle, you know? So yeah, I, I was able to kinda look at the realities of what it took to become a writer and, and incorporate that into my practices.

Helping other writers

[00:28:11] Voiceover – Suki: Like many young writers, Joan Gelfand’s early writing was focused on art and self-expression. But when she quit full-time work to write, she intentionally built her career as her business. In 2018, she wrote a book entitled You Can Be a Winning Writer for other writers hoping to help them face their writing career with an eye toward success. I asked her what she’d noticed about other writers that led her to write the book.

[00:28:33] Suki Wessling: I think a lot of writers I was coming in contact with were disorganized, didn’t possess the, uh, fortitude to really pursue what they wanted and got discouraged way too easily. One thing I talk about in that book is. I started coaching other writers, and I say it wasn’t for lack of talent that so many writers I encountered did not succeed. It was for lack of organization and strategy and business skills,

[00:29:12] Mm-hmm.

[00:29:13] Joan Gelfand: plain and simple. You know, they, they weren’t putting themselves in situations. Like one of the first things I learned was, oh, there’s a writing community that you need to become a part of. Oh, okay, okay, I’ll do that. And like you said, stepping off the plane in California, you can see I’m not a shy person. So then there, then there’s the issue of writers who are just timid and, and uh, don’t have the confidence. That’s why the subtitle of that book is Craft Commitment, Community and Confidence. And I felt like I was talking about things that a lot of people were not talking about, which is, it’s not just talent that gets you from point A to point B, it’s, it’s the commitment and the community and the confidence.

[00:30:10] Um, so yeah, that was definitely something that I learned after and I wasn’t in the first year, I wrote that book after about 10 years of being in the community.

[00:30:22] Yeah.

[00:30:23] Suki Wessling: How did it feel when you stepped outside of that life where you felt that you were so restricted from practicing your art and becoming a poet? Did you have a milestone, like first poem published in a literary journal or anything like that that you remember that was really notable in, in your feeling like, okay, I’m back.

[00:30:48] Joan Gelfand: You know, it was a bit of another renaissance because I, again, started meeting people and realized, okay, I’ll go to these open mics, and I started meeting people who brought me in. Oh, come be on my radio show. Oh, yes, let’s put you up as a featured writer. The, the submissions and the publishing were a challenge for the first year that I decided to get very serious, but then I just used my business self and I stuck with it. And then once I started to get published, then I had a resume. I started to build up a resume and talk about building confidence. You know, you have your first publication and then other editors see that, and then you have more and more and more, and then that it builds on itself.

[00:31:47] Suki Wessling:

The changing publishing world

[00:31:47] Suki Wessling: Everything in the writing and publishing world has changed. Just everything. Uh, but we could start with just the, say, consolidation of publishing houses so that there’s very few truly independent presses left. And then move into the fact that we now have AI just pumping out lots of slop.

[00:32:16] You have published a body of work. From your perspective, what has changed? What is important, what’s different about now?

[00:32:29] Joan Gelfand: Well, to be honest, I am in an existential moment thinking that I am finished writing books. I think the publishing world is kind of corrupt, honestly. You know, when the publishing world gives people $10 million contracts that they could be supporting hundreds of artists, you kind of, you know, I’m not a cynical person, but you just start to get a little, uh, how do I say, you know, turned off like, um, you know, publishing contracts, put everything on the writer. The publishing companies won’t do anything to help 90% of the writers. And so all of the resources go toward, you know, a few writers. Uh, you know, the whole, it’s, I have to just say, you know, I’m at an age where I have the luxury to just say, I can’t deal with this. So I don’t have a big answer for what young people should be doing. I have no idea.

[00:33:49] I think every artist I know is devastated by the lack of support. Musicians aren’t getting royalties anymore. Their music is being played, they’re not getting checks. Um, you know, it’s like, on the one hand everything is available to everyone through the internet and through these services.

[00:34:16] But at the same time, I have writer friends who are involved in lawsuits against AI companies who’ve taken their intellectual property. So I’m kind of like, I’m done. I’m, I’m not gonna do this anymore. Uh, it’s too complicated. I just don’t wanna fight Goliath. I feel like there’s something out there that is not supporting artists.

[00:34:43] And so I, I actually, I should say though, I’m coming back to a more of a grassroots vision. Like I have artist friends in the Bay Area. I’m still game and down to support them, but I also feel like in this particular moment, my energy might be better spent on social justice than on trying to get more poems published.

[00:35:10] Uh, I think we’re in a very pivotal and scary moment. And so, um, you know, that’s kind of what, where I’m gonna die. And I thought about this a lot before our interview. I thought, you know, what am I gonna say about what you, about this moment? And I have to tell you, it’s not a good moment.

The freedom of the 70s

[00:35:32] Suki Wessling: It isn’t, but it’s interesting to me that when I heard you describing the seventies, when you, when, you know, when we look back at that, we realize how few people and how little money was involved in that era that has become very important. And now we’re in a time where you can literally publish a book for nothing.

[00:35:59] And I look at that and I think, I don’t know who is gonna find the nugget of gold here, but it’s almost like back in the seventies where somebody found somebody who could press records for cheap and they pressed, you know, 200 records. And now those 200 records are incredibly important.

[00:36:19] Joan Gelfand: Suki, when I sat down to write my book, and I, you know, like I said, we write to discover ourselves. I had an outline, but the book changed completely when I sat down to write it for many reasons.

[00:36:33] But. One of the first things I did was kind of do a little search and what do I find? I think this is unbelievable. I find there’s a website called The Berkeley Revolution. Oh, how interesting. Look it up. There’s my friends, there’s newspaper interviews with my friends from the seventies on this website.

[00:36:58] A professor at UC Berkeley a sociology professor, so enamored with this particular time, which we are talking about three years, 1972 to 1975 in Berkeley, that he called it the Berkeley Revolution. I asked him if it was okay if I used that on my book.

[00:37:19] He had his students research all of the archival material because what was magical about that time, not only when, when you say people publishing their own work, and it was very free. The Women’s Movement and the Black Power Movement were working together and we were working with Black Panthers to raise money for their children’s school program, lunch, you know, for kids at school.

[00:37:52] And one of the things I say in my book, in the introduction to my book is we were the precursor to the Me Too and, uh, Black Lives Matter because we, were cooperating, we were supporting each other. And, that was just really, I think, a stellar kind of political sociological moment.

[00:38:25] Voiceover – Suki: You are listening to the Babblery’s interview with writer Joan Gelfand. When we return,

[00:38:30] Joan Gelfand: You know, there’s old protestors like me, but there’s also people who’ve never, ever been in a protest before. And you have to kind of uh, what’s the word? Hold their hand a little bit sometimes.

Segment 3: This moment we’re in

[00:38:43]

[00:39:17] Voiceover – Suki: This is your host, Suki Wessling. Before the break, writer Joan Gand and I had been reminiscing about the parallels between the early seventies and now, with the freedom then to make a zine or press some records that became important later on, and now the ability to self-publish books, blogs, and music that can reach people all around the world. But there’s a difference. Joan referred to the early seventies as a stellar moment, but this one? It’s a strange moment and Joan has thoughts on that.

[00:39:45]

A strange moment

[00:39:50] Joan Gelfand: I think now, quite honestly, we’re in a winter, it’s cold, you know, the, the internet, for all it gives us, it takes away so much, like personal connection. People still need to go out and be with each other. And it’s so, it’s gotten so easy to isolate. And so we are in a very, very, whew, a strange moment. A strange moment.

[00:40:26] Yeah.

[00:40:27] Suki Wessling: You know, you live in San Francisco and I live in Santa Cruz County, and we are in two places where people still are getting together, but my heart goes out to people who live in these places where they don’t have a cafe where a writer might go and speak, or, you know, just all of the unusual and very weird things that happen in Santa Cruz County are, you know, that, that are, so we still have that sort of, um, no, not not as intense and focused as you had in, in the Berkeley Revolution, but

[00:41:02] Joan Gelfand: Because we didn’t have any other way to connect or communicate.

[00:41:06] Suki Wessling: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you mentioned the Me Too movement and one of the other resonances about your book is that this period was really notable for women getting together and creating a vision of how women can be. And you know, as you noted, some of them went off in a direction that you weren’t willing to join.

[00:41:33] And I would say is, you know, we’re, we’re part of the human race. Separatism is generally not healthy or successful. It very often ends with the separatists hurting themselves in some way, whether it’s gender or race or religion or whatever it is. So here we are in this moment with so many of the legal rights that women have won, either literally being stripped away or in practice being stripped away.

[00:42:06] Um, how do you think that women now can, not replicate what happened, but learn from and maybe find a way forward looking at what women did in Second Wave feminism?

Learning from second wave feminism

[00:42:23] Joan Gelfand: I think in the seventies, maybe people didn’t know what hit them. You know, women coalesced. I mean, one of the things that I talk about in the book is remember in 1972 you had Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan. They weren’t all gay. It, I mean, the lesbian movement in Berkeley was a little unusual. And in fact, a lot of the women who started Second Wave Feminism, were concerned and called the, uh, the lesbians, the, the, the Lavender Menace. You know, they were, in fact, I was talking to someone who made a film about, Sally Gearhart, who was a professor of mine at San Francisco State. She was a leader in San Francisco and wow, she really was up against a lot of opposition. So it’s not so easy to just say, oh yes, let’s just coalesce and replicate. I think now we need to be all together, men, women, all on the same page. Feminism, social justice, give women their rights back, but also give immigrants their right back and Black people their rights back.

[00:43:50] You know? I mean, we’re, we’re in a mess. We’re in a mess. And of course, you know, I’m one of these people who believes, we swung very far liberal with Obama for eight years, and while we were enjoying that, the Republicans were making a complete agenda to bring it down. And so you just, at some point you have to sit back and just, it’s all, it’s up to me it’s- awestruck. I, you know, I’m awestruck at, at what, what’s happened, but I’m also of course angry and I’m willing to put myself out there to try to get change, you know?

[00:44:35]

Making change

[00:44:36] Voiceover – Suki: Writer Joan Gelfand started her adult life when she stepped off a plane at SFO into the arms of a quiet revolution in Berkeley. In her memoir Outside Voices, she details the joys and the struggles of that time, a time when no one knew whether what they were doing would be seen as important in years to come, but they did it anyway.

[00:44:54] Joan Gelfand: Our work in the seventies with the Black Panthers and the women’s movement and feminism , we set the stage for everything that was happening right now, and we got thwarted too. I mean, the thing is, it’s really important to not over romanticize too much, because we did get thwarted. The government was up our, you know, organizations and infiltrating as they are now. You know, but at that time it was so much more heartening because we were making some strides. You know, abortion was legal nationally.

[00:45:35] Voiceover – Suki: Perhaps it’s always the prerogative of youth to be able to throw everything aside and step into the unknown, but it’s the prerogative of age to know what it really means to step into the unknown. Joan hit me with a surprise late in the interview, telling me that she feels she’s written her last book. So I asked her what she’s planning to do now, who that revolutionary girl is now that she has the perspective of age.

[00:45:58] Joan Gelfand: You know, I’m in a very particular situation. This is just like a caveat, which is what I would wanna do in my mind, I have to triple think and consider because my daughter lives in Germany and I have to travel internationally, and I have heard horror stories and my grandchild is over there, and I’ve heard horror stories about, you know, coming back and forth between borders, not only other people coming into the country, but even Americans coming home and being thwarted.

[00:46:34] So I have to be a little careful. But I do believe that showing up in tremendous numbers is really important. And what I’ve heard, ’cause I did a lot of reading after the Big No Kings protests, is that, you know, we’re gonna reach a critical mass of millions of people saying, this is not okay.

[00:47:03] And so that is kind of where I’ve resolved to go, is to try to encourage, you know, for me, myself, to go out and be in the protests, but also to encourage other pe- you know, I’m meeting people that say they’ve, you know, there’s old protestors like me, but there’s also people who’ve never, ever been in a protest before. And you have to kind of. Uh, what’s the word? Hold their hand a little bit sometimes.

[00:47:33] Voiceover – Suki: I spoke to Joan later and she elaborated on the role of those of us who have the luxury right now to push back on the backlash.

[00:47:41] Joan Gelfand: Thank God the financial and economic empowerment has not been rescinded, but our health, health rights have been rescinded. And who, I mean, who would’ve ever thought that once we got on the same page about women having control over their own bodies, we would, go, you know, fall so far behind and um yeah I have a, you know, obviously we all have a lot of feelings about how horrible, uh, the abortion bans have been.

[00:48:14] I think the main thing is we, we don’t over romanticize the what happened in the seventies and how strong the feminist movement was, but it was a very strong movement. I think right now what people are saying is, you know, we can’t get comfortable and we can’t be apathetic right now. And we, we have to, we have to really, uh, get out and be visible and fight and, you know, we are under the shadow of, you know, losing our democracy. And it’s very frightening for a lot of people.

[00:48:51] So there’s so many fronts to fight on, right? It’s like women’s health, immigration, privacy. I mean, it’s just like, hello, where do we start, you know? I’m starting by showing up, standing on the street with signs. And we are working with a church that’s, getting food to undocumented workers who are afraid to leave their homes, uh, and don’t have food. So just kind of being aware, awake. Every day, what can I do? Like I said, even just the buying the groceries, even though it sounds so simple is so appreciated.

[00:49:37] I think the basics of what we did was so beautiful and I’m saying it again, community. Nobody can do anything by themselves. So join with whatever group you feel is doing the right thing, whether it’s Indivisible or the Democratic Party or Act Blue, or whatever it is, so that you feel connected. I think that’s totally number one. Uh, you know, doing everything online, everything by yourself, and not feeling like there’s a community with you, is detrimental.

Time travel advice

[00:50:14] Suki Wessling: So here you are at this point in your life, um, having come from a youth in a time of revolution. And here you are in a time of revolution again, hopefully. What do you wanna tell your- time travel back, tell your young self, assuming it won’t change your life or anything, you know, none of those time travel paradoxes. But what would you say to your young self? How do you view her and how do you view yourself having been through this life which you have made extraordinary in your way?

[00:50:49] Joan Gelfand: You know, I think about it now a lot because I’m at a different, very different part of my life and I think, you know, I took myself seriously, but maybe not seriously enough. So I don’t have huge regrets, but I have some. You know, it took me till I was in my late thirties to have the confidence to apply to get my master’s.

[00:51:12] I, I think I would’ve moved things much differently. Uh, I think I worried too much about how things were gonna work out or not work out, and that came from, you know, how my youth was informed. You know, there’s a lot of anxiety about things working or not working out.

[00:51:30] I’m glad I took myself seriously enough that I could sit at my desk and write seven books and finish them. I meet people all the time who have books in them, but they can’t get from point A to point C and they’re not aligned. You know, they’re not, they don’t feel good, uh, at the end of the day. And so I feel grateful that I had that sticktoitiveness enough. But you know, like any artist, you feel I should have done more. I, I I, I should have worked harder, you know? So yeah, that, but now I don’t have the energy for all that.

[00:52:13] Suki Wessling: You seem pretty happy about it though, I

[00:52:15] Joan Gelfand: Yeah. I feel accomplished. I feel accomplished. I do, because I bit the bullet. I took the rejections. I had my work traditionally published. I waited a year to get a publisher for a book. You know what I mean? I, I, I paid, I paid my dues. Yeah.

[00:52:33] Voiceover – Suki: I asked Joan Gelfand to read an abridged version of the end of her memoir, words about a time long past that still reverberate today.

[00:52:41] Joan Gelfand: So how does the Berkeley Revolution end? First, the government squelches co-opts, arrests and intimidates the left’s leadership. For us women, it is over because we have become dispirited. The infighting wears us down. We are factionalized. For me, it ends on a personal level. It ends because I have changed. I am resistant to the separatists, to becoming a rule follower of yet another dogma, another oppressive, powerful force, and I have outgrown the falling down house.

[00:53:19] I want a real bed, a house without leaks, a heating system, and yes, maybe a house with a coat of paint. But even beyond the material, it is over for me because I crave distance from the intensity, from the comings and goings, from uncertainty. I need to bring myself back into a benign state, a state that will reset my nervous system and worldview, a reset that will allow me the time and permission to make decisions for myself and write poems.

[00:53:52] I need to leave to find out who I love and how I want to love. Am I still willing to take risks, to live life as a big experiment? I’m not sure. Not the least of why it’s over is that I need to figure out how I can continue to be a change agent without becoming a separatist. In a way, for me, it is a graduation.

[00:54:16] I am weary. Having compassion and empathy incited me to action, to fight the fights of women, but also of the silence, the abused, people with disabilities. Perhaps it is time to extend that empathy and compassion to myself to realize and accept what I’d lost and that I had survived. And so I am leaving. I am leaving the falling down house with the chaos, the creaky steps, and the random comings and goings.

[00:54:46] Maybe there is more than one way to change my life, maybe more than one way to change the culture, racism, sexism. Maybe if I work enough, I could find words to inspire people and the world to change the way that I continue to be changed by books and words. Maybe that is where I will learn to love, to start with vulnerability on the page and grow to find it in the rest of my life.

[00:55:12] Maybe instead of the violence that has been the strategy of last resort. Maybe just maybe we can evolve to love.

[00:55:20]

[00:55:21] Voiceover – Suki: Thanks to Joan Gelfand for sharing her life and work with us. You can find links to her work and other materials on the show page for the episode. The music used in this episode was written and performed by the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective, recorded in 1976 with KSQD’s own Sandy Stone in the booth, and distributed by Olivia Records. Thanks also to Nancy Vogl for talking to me about those years and providing musical context. Thanks for listening.

Powered by