Overview

Pioneer American journalist Georgie Anne Geyer has covered revolutions and coups, from Guatemala to Bosnia with the courage and political insights that have made her one of the world's most respected correspondents. This autobiography tells the story of her career which carried her from a cub reporter's beat in Chicago to the Bolivian prison of Regis Debray to an ice cream parlor with Fidel Castro. At the same time, it tells of another revolution - the inner revolution of a whole watershed generation of women - which shaped her choices, her sacrifices and her heart, as she took the daring path to high adventure in a challenging man's world.

Full Product Details

9781560005292

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is another of the eclectic Radcliffe Biographies of extraordinary American women (which includes the Coleses' Men of Crisis and Joseph Lash's Helen Keller); and that presumably explains why Geyer, a longtime (1960-75) Chicago Daily News reporter and now a syndicated columnist, writes of herself - growing up in Chicago or with Guatemala's insurgents - almost exclusively as a woman. The result, though not particularly involving as biography or wholly persuasive as journalism, does have facets of woman-journalist interest. Geyer sees herself, not-so-unusually, as the product of a stubborn, hard - working, undemonstrative father (hence her recourse to work and accomplishment in order to 'earn' love ) and a more cultured and sensitive mother - who nonetheless instilled in her a deep dissatisfaction with the 'woman's role.' From her father's battle with Chicago mobsters, she developed a burning hatred of bullies; the nearby black community, alluring and threatening, represented my first fascination with another culture. But, overwhelmingly: I wanted to know - I had to know - everything in the world. So Geyer, no great shakes as a writer, became a journalist: an interim woman journalist, on the cusp of liberation, and a specialist in Third World revolutions, Latin American foremost. Geyer herself draws parallels between my own revolution. . . as a woman and the guerrilla warfare she was covering. She also repeatedly notes the advantages a Western woman has in gaining the guerrillas' confidence. (When they have the time, men in general will open up more to a woman; but when they have an important message, they want an important reporter: a man.) Still, Geyer pronounces herself immune to the romance of 'revolution' (because life was real in Chicago). And, at the same time, she's highly conscious of the maleness of the leaders she meets. (Castro and Allende, in particular, come off poorly on every score.) There's an odd, rather distasteful combination here of griping at a woman's lot and capitalizing on being (as we frequently hear) a comely blond - and also, alas, a mix of gossip and gush. ( Although still very much in love with Latin America. . . I decided it was time to go to Russia. . . . Years before I had fallen in love with Russian history. . . . ) But the ambiguities, ambivalences, and inconsistencies are on clear display too. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Georgie Anne Geyer has been a foreign correspondent, an author and biographer, and a syndicated columnist for half a century, currently with Universal Press Syndicate. She is the author of Buying the Night Flight and When Cats Reigned Like Kings.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available