L'Echappée editions bring out Emma Goldman's autobiography in pocket format. The
opportunity to come back to this leading document, finally accessible in Frenchwith high quality editorial work. ---- The publication in 2018 of Emma Goldman'sautobiography by Editions de l'Échappée, which comes out today in pocket format,righted an injustice. Published for the first time in 1931, and republished manytimes since in several languages, the autobiography of this major figure ofanarchism was still inaccessible to the French-speaking public, except for apartial and biased translation. With the publication in 2017 of the account ofhis two years in Bolshevik Russia [1], the two main accounts of Goldman are nowaccessible in quality versions.Living my life is nearly forty years of wanderings on both sides of the Atlanticalongside a militant anarchist, from her arrival, at the age of twenty, in NewYork in 1889 until her double European exile : she was expelled for the firsttime from the United States in 1919 to Bolshevik Russia, which she in turn had toflee in 1921.Deeply marked by the massacre of Haymarket Square in 1886, Emma Goldman was partof all the struggles of the working class of her time and in this this documentis already precious to us. Goldman's writing adds, to what is already a leadingdocument, a humanity distilled throughout a narrative that does justice to aplural personality and never relinquishes the "double duty" assigned toanarchists: reconcile, in the words of Malatesta, "total freedom in totalsolidarity".If the episodes, the most significant fights are known to us: her tirelessmilitancy, her incarcerations, her trip to Russia, etc., what gives us todiscover these chronologically narrated episodes is above all a free woman.Raised in the Yiddish-speaking Jewish diaspora, she had to free herself from afamily environment that was too narrow for her, and it was within the anarchistmovement that she found something to feed her unquenchable thirst for freedom.Midwifery experienceGoldman is a free woman who claims it: her lovers, her loves are part of hermilitant life. Goldman's feminism is from this point of view of burningtopicality: the freedom of women to decide for themselves prevails over the rest.A tireless activist, Emma Goldman never spared herself and did not prioritize herfights. But Goldman is also a woman open to other worlds. We discover her love ofcontemporary theater and she passes without transition from her experience as amidwife with working-class women, evoking in passing the problem of unwantedpregnancies - which will lead her to give numerous conferences on contraception -to a discussion on a particular contemporary author. All his experiences feed histhoughts and enrich his political struggles.Here we must pay tribute to the editorial work of L'Échappée, the text of Goldmanis particularly well restored to us, the translation as much as the work of thenotes is of the highest quality. In closing this book, we are left with a wish, ahope. That very soon be translated and published, in order to make themaccessible to a French-speaking public, the main texts of two other femalefigures of American anarchism : Lucy Parsons and Voltairine de Cleyre.David (UCL Chambery)Emma Goldman, Living My Life. An anarchist at the time of the Revolutions (trans.Jacqueline Reuss and Laure Batier), L'Échappée, 2018 (2022 for the pocketedition), 1128 pages, 19.90 euros.To validate[1]Emma Goldman, The Agony of Revolution. My two years in Russia (1920-1921),trans. English by Etienne Lesourd, Les Nuits rouges, Paris, 2017, 300 pages, 15euros.See also "1920-1921: Emma Goldman, witness to the Bolshevik masquerade",Alternative Libertaire, December 2021.https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Emma-Goldman-Vivre-ma-vie_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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