Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975, Revised Edition

399 Pages·3.149 MB·English

by  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Also by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Economic Development in American Indian Reservations (ed.)
Native American Energy Resources and Development (ed.)
Indians of the Americas: Human Rights and Self-Determination
La Cuestión Mískita en la Revolución Nicaragüense
Indigenous Peoples: A Global Quest for Justice (ed.)
e Miskito Indians of Nicaragua: Caught in the Crossfire
Blood on the Border: Memoir of the Contra War
Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie
Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico
e Great Sioux Nation: Oral History of the Sioux-United States Treaty of
1868
An Indigenous History of the United States
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Outlaw Woman
A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Revised, with a New Aerword
Foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
NORMAN
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Copyright © 2014 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the
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ISBN 978-0-8061-4479-5 (paperback : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8061-4535-8 (ebook : mobipocket)
ISBN 978-0-8061-4536-5 (ebook : epub)
is eBook was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice
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In memory of Audrey Rosenthal, 1940–1967, who died in South Aica in
the struggle against apartheid
and
in honor of all those, past and present, committed to creating a just and
peaceful world
and
for the war resisters and deserters, and our political prisoners, who continue
to pay the price for our struggles
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Contents
Foreword, by Jennifer Baumgardner
Preface to the Revised Edition
Prologue: Red Dirt Girl
1. San Francisco Chrysalis
2. Becoming a Scholar
3. Valley of Death
4. 1968
5. Sisterhood in the Time of War
6. Revolution in the Air
7. Cuba Libre
8. Desperada
9. Aer Attica
10. “Indian Country”
Aerword
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Foreword
In 1989, I was a sophomore in college in a small midwestern town. A close
friend confided in me that she had been raped during her study abroad.
at experience provoked a flood of terrible memories of sexual abuse
from both of her parents, but mostly cognizance of her cold, intimidating,
irritable, and revered father having molested her. As the visions grew more
horrific and her anger more intense, I remember telling her that if she
killed her father, I’d help her go on the lam. What else could she do?
Making this pronouncement, and even imagining the plan, felt far from
scary at the time (although it sounds unbelievably risky to me now). It
sounded, actually, like the only sane thing to do. What happened to my
roommate was beyond comprehension to many people in my life—my
parents, most of my friends—but I was beginning to see incest and sexual
assault as frighteningly common.
Around this time, my older sister began coming to terms with her first
sexual experience: being raped by a high school friend at fourteen while
she was at a party, drinking for the first time, semiconscious. I was
nineteen and waking up to the utter acceptance of violence against
women. I was tapping into the power of telling the truth about the things
that happen behind closed doors, screaming out the secrets that protect
perpetrators and do nothing to help victims. e only way to make a
difference in the face of this denial of injustice was to ignore rules, mores,
and laws.
Also at nineteen, I first fell in love with radical feminist writings like
those of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. In fact, I fell in love with activists like
her—they were my Jesse Jameses, my Bonnie Parkers, my Pretty Boy
Floyds. And yet I found myself stuck in a conflict. I was grateful for the
insights and inspiration, but wished I had that culture of mass organizing.
Why was I born in the 1970s? e movements I wanted to be a part of
had come to a head when I was just learning to walk. I feared I had missed
out on traveling a revolutionary path.
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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s childhood was anything but privileged, her
years as a politico anything but timid. But in this book, Outlaw Woman,
and in the new aerword Roxanne has written, I encounter her grappling
with the myriad ways that a feminist has attempted to construct an
ethical, politically coherent life. She writes of reading de Beauvoir’s e
Second Sex in 1963: “It was the family . . . the basic unit of patriarchy and
male dominance. . . . is was my rationalization for leaving my husband
and daughter, certain it was a political move.”
Already, you sense in her account the idea that simply leaving her
family might not solve the problem of male dominance. e beauty of the
book, in addition to its page-turning narrative, is her continual desire to
remain self-aware. Each new chapter presents an opportunity to review
past choices and understand her own motivations perhaps differently,
certainly more deeply.
Over the years, I have come to terms with the legacy of the 1960s and
1970s. e deep belief that the world was about to transform into one
where women’s liberationists would be in the vanguard and capitalism
dismantled didn’t pave the way to that reality. In our present reality,
capitalism is bound up in the body of social justice. ere are corporate
sponsors, social entrepreneurs, and billionaire men at the forefront of
global health, and oen, activists appear lonely, silly, and naïve to try and
work totally outside the system—to become an outlaw.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz calls herself an outlaw in this memoir because
to abide by the laws of what was an overtly racist, misogynist, anti-gay,
anti–human rights America—which is what the radicals of the 1960s
confronted—was to be an accomplice. And she was trying to change her
personal script: a radical feminist who visited Valerie Solanas aer she
shot Warhol, Roxanne also struggled with her attraction to and
dependence on domineering men. She writes of herself and her Second
Wave peers: “We were all struggling between the deep conditioning we
received as females and our newfound feminism.”
An outlaw is a deeply attractive identity, even if it ends in bullets and
blood. But I’m slowly coming to see that the true revolutionary
understands her history, has visions of a better future, and faces (with
courage) her own era. is book is a testament to how at least one outlaw
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woman evolved, struggled, and continued to make change. e story of
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz inspires me to find my path, rather than pine for
that revolutionary past. I’m grateful to her and to feminists like her for
that and for so much more. I show my gratitude by knowing my history,
imagining something better, and facing the reality of today.
Jennifer Baumgardner
September 11, 2013
New York City
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Preface to the Revised Edition
City Lights originally published Outlaw Woman in 2001. I appreciate the
two great feminist editors there who worked with me on the book, Elaine
Katzenberger and Nancy Peters.
Outlaw Woman is my second memoir and follows Red Dirt: Growing
Up Okie, which tells the story of my early life and ended with my move to
San Francisco in 1960. at book, originally published by Verso, was
published in a paperback edition by the University of Oklahoma Press in
2005.
I started this book in 1989 in Molly Giles’s weekly writing group and
continued it in Diana O’Hehir’s and Sheila Ballantyne’s Mills College
writing workshops. I am grateful to those three fine writers and to the
other writers—especially the young feminists—in the workshops. During
the final year of work on the book, I benefited from Wendy Earl’s careful
reading and critique.
I appreciate Jean-Louis Brachet, Rob Albritton, and Martin Legassick
for keeping my letters and making them available to me. Others—
especially Chude Allen, David Barkham, Cathy Cade, Dana Densmore,
Darlene Fife, Mary Howell, Elizabeth Martínez, and Lawrence Weiss—as
well as those who kept my letters, shared their memories that sometimes
conflicted with my own, reminding me not always to trust my first recall
but to probe more deeply, and with humility.
Many writer friends and colleagues read versions of the book over the
decade I was working on it. Ellen Dubois, Elizabeth Martínez, Simon
Ortiz, and Mark Rudd read early versions and encouraged me. Sam
Green, Chris Crass, and others of the younger generation read later
versions and their enthusiasm for the project inspired me. Karen Wald’s
keen eye and vast knowledge of the Cuban Revolution helped me with
the chapter on Cuba. I used some material from this book in my lectures
for my annual women’s studies course at California State University, East
Bay, “Women, War, and Revolution,” and the students’ responses were
invaluable.
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