“Honestly, Dad, I’m not enthusiastic about No Surrender. I mean, you have some good stuff there, but it’s almost all analytical. People relate much better to personal experiences. I wish you’d write about yours, about what life in prison is like.”
That’s my son, Chesa, and he’s talking about the book that just came out with some of my essays and book reviews. It’s July 2004, he’s twenty-three, and we’re on a family reunion visit at Clinton Correctional Facility. (In a reform won after the 1971 Attica rebellion, New York State allows periodic forty-four-hour visits from immediate family in small trailer homes on the prison grounds. Chesa has been coming on these “trailer visits” since he was five, and they’ve played a wonderful role in strengthening our bond and enriching our relationship.)
The idea of a memoir is not a new suggestion to me. Since I came “upstate” in 1983, fellow prisoners have repeatedly encouraged me to write my “life story,” but I’ve never had the slightest desire to do so. Everyone’s life, if well told, is interesting; but I always said I wanted to live my life rather than write about it, and the memoir as a form always felt too self-involved, and often too self-justifying, for me.
But this challenge is different. Beyond my natural desire to be responsive to my son, there’s new context. Since the 2003 release of the Sam Green and Bill Siegel film The Weather Underground, I’ve received a steady stream of letters from young activists who admire the WUO’s deep commitment to fundamental social change. These lively and engaged letters are filled with questions trying to learn from my generation’s experiences. I consider these correspondences my top priority; but there is only so much one can say in a letter, and only so many dialogues one can carry on at a time. For a number of reasons, I’m not yet ready to write about prison, as Chesa urged. But a memoir about my movement experiences has become appealing as a way to respond more fully and widely to the issues young activists have been raising with me.
This book is not at all a comprehensive history of SDS and the WUO (the best such account can be found in Dan Berger’s Outlaws of America). Nor does it tell my life story. For one thing, there have been far more major influences on me, wonderful people, than I could even mention, let alone adequately describe. Because the experiences briefly recounted here can’t begin to do the individuals involved justice, I generally avoid giving real or full names unless I’m discussing public events or the person has given me permission.
There are many pitfalls to writing memoirs. Memory can get hazy, and honesty is a constant struggle. There is the danger of pontificating with latter-day wisdom or, alternatively, of living the feelings of the moment in a way that justifies errors. The reader will decide how well I do. My fondest hope for this effort is that it can be of use in the ongoing struggle.
David Gilbert, July 4, 2010