Americans should read Glendinning’s book before November 3
by Piyush Mathur, Ph.D.
Chellis Glendinning—the author of In the Company of Rebels: A Generational Memoir of Bohemians, Deep Heads, and History Makers (2019)—is a wide-ranging thinker, versatile writer, activist, and explorer. From the 1980s onward, she has come to be known predominantly for her eco-psychological critiques of techno-capitalistic civilizations—whose sheer maintenance and expansion, her exposés reveal, leave behind traumatized communities and ecologies the world over. When I published my own book in 2017, I was lucky enough to have secured Glendinning’s endorsement for it; since then, I have been infrequently in contact with her via email. I had thus been aware that she was about to publish her first Spanish novel in 2018—but was a bit taken aback with the publication last year of In the Company of Rebels.
I requested this latter book from the publisher in April, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still limited in its worldwide spread. Soon after, though, all sorts of personal challenges related to the pandemic slowed my attempt at reading it. But when I did get around to it, I couldn’t help but think the following: If in 2019 this memoir would have been predominantly of a nostalgic or historical value for younger Americans, then in 2020 it is nothing short of a guiding light luckily thrown into their deepening turmoil. For even as the entire world has sunk into a medley of medical and economic catastrophes churning atop a long unfolding ecological calamity, the United States is not quite what it is looking up to for any kind of leadership, leave aside wisdom; indeed, that nation-state is mostly being perceived as a bafflingly sorry figure.
Firmly controlled by its mercurial boss, the ruling political leadership of the United States has not been keen on contributing positively toward a global future, either. The divisive, frequently violent, chaos that President Donald Trump had set in place through his 2016 electoral campaign has only worsened through the pains of the pandemic—whose management he has gambled away in a cynical hope that it would win him the upcoming election in November. Meanwhile, against the backdrop of a prior Bernie Sanders-led progressivist thrust—some of which is being loosely carried forward by Joe Biden’s Democratic campaign for the presidency—the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been channeling the Afro-Americans’ resistance to systemic discrimination and police violence directed against them.
All in all, we have been witnessing entrenched injustices and their faux glorifications inside the US and parts of Europe getting revisited, exposed, and rejected (sometimes by being literally pulled into the dust). And as I write this piece—in the aftermath of the latest well-publicised police shooting (on August 23) of another Afro-American individual, Jacob S. Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin—journalistic comparisons are increasingly being made between this year and 1968 in the United States. As it happens, Glendinning’s book’s front cover carries the famous 1969 photograph of an unarmed young woman being surrounded by National Guardsmen—bearing unsheathed bayonets and live ammunition—as she protests to keep open UC Berkley’s People’s Park. (That whole protest would see the shooting death of James Rector—with grievous injuries being inflicted upon some other protesters—at the hands of law enforcement authorities; the woman in the photo, incidentally, is reading a newspaper while being surrounded by the Guardsmen.)
So, how exactly is Glendinning’s book?
In the Company of Rebels is a lively, chatty, yet erudite collection of 17 chapters that introduce us intimately to the key leaders of liberatory change in the United States—and, to a tiny extent, in Latin America—through the 1960s-early 2000s. Although Glendinning’s focus here is on the aforementioned time period and geographies, she is well aware that the fight for freedoms and dignity is both never-ending and worldwide:
[I]n its basic template, the contemporary world is really not much different from other periods of history. Like the Neolithic era, when the storing/hoarding of food launched humanity’s first Haves and Have-Nots. Or when, three millennia before Christ, kings forcibly cowed their citizens into assembly-line crews to sweat out the construction of the pyramids. Or the era of sixteen-hour days of low- paid/no-breaks toil in the dank factories of the Industrial Revolution; throughout most of history there have been owners and there have been slaves, cognac-sipping generals and human fodder in muddy trenches, the 99 percent and the 1 percent. (“Preface,” p. xiv)
Except that the onward march of technology within the framework of corporate capitalism, Glendinning adds, has by now ensured that injustice and exploitation get to become utterly universal: “As we used to say during the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s: ‘There’s Nowhere to Hide’” (“Preface,” p. xiv).
Those are the general horizons of this book, though. Its chapters themselves are astute, energizing captures of the key facets of the last half century of the American struggle for (and achievements relating to) greater freedoms, greater systemic justice, and empowerment of the marginalized. Glendinning’s approach is to pick out these facets; identify the themes and subthemes comprising them; and wittily profile the wonderful people who pioneered them (and whom she personally came to know and work with). Savvy readers would find her selections and classificatory terms to be canny and resonant—as they keenly grasp the essence of each of these American liberatory strands and their associated places.
So, the book starts out with the chapter titled “Berkley: A Likely Place to Begin;” has one toward the end titled “Inside the Beltway;” with others such as “The Roaring Inside Her: Feminism,” “Iron John: The Men’s Movement,” “Long Live Ned Ludd! Technology Criticism,” and “The Landscape of Freedom: People-of-Color Ecology,” among others, placed in between. Most of these chapters—to reiterate somewhat—are written around highly personable characterizations and ideational-cum-activist contributions of the pioneers. Glendinning typically starts out by giving a brief historical introduction to a given theme—say, the men’s movement—in a conversational, first-hand style; she then tells the reader about how, where, and under what circumstances she first met its leading luminary (or luminaries).
Thereon out, the reader is treated to a mix of intellectual history, autobiography, multifarious biographies, and incisive assessments of the chapter’s protagonists. The book overall is very much like reading an autobiographical novel—whose characters are nothing if not a lineup of recent American history’s countercultural who’s who; of course, all these chapters generate a remarkable portrayal of Glendinning herself as the narrator. She comes up as a very inquisitive, passionate, and compassionate youngster (from a comfortable background)—who has lately felt compelled by her accumulated experiences of over seven decades to share her memories and wisdom with the youngsters of today.
The book has several vintage photographs that add a great deal of evocative value and authenticity to the account, the people being discussed. While any enlightened person would benefit from this book and enjoy reading it, I must recommend it particularly to Americans in their late teens. I also believe that this book would make a great addition to the early undergraduate years of the Humanities curriculum in that country and beyond; other than that, historically minded researchers anyway would benefit from Glendinning’s participatory observations of these slices of the past.
I would have liked to give more direct insights into the details of the particular chapters—but no such effort would have done justice to the book itself, which is a riotously rich, interlocked tale of some of our true heroes. You have to read this account to enjoy it—by stepping with Glendinning into these hallowed historical corridors of the United States (and parts of Latin America): whose spirit and visionary proposals we ironically need just as badly today as we did in the 1960s. As a matter of fact, it would be a great idea for American citizens to read this book before the Big Vote come November!
Glendinning, Chellis (2019). In the Company of Rebels: A Generational Memoir of Bohemians, Deep Heads, and History Makers (New York: New Village Press). Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61332-095-2; ASIN : B07KCJFBN2.
Piyush Mathur, Ph. D., is the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017).
