Split: A Counterculture Childhood

In this disarmingly amiable reminiscence (The Atlantic Monthly) that may be the best argument for the left since Marx (The New Yorker), poet and writer Lisa Michaels blends memoir with social commentary to tell a remarkable tale of growing up as a child of political activists during the early seventies. Michaels’s upbringing was marked by communes, rallies, and road trips; as a young girl she traveled across the country with her mother and stepfather in a customized mail truck, complete with a wood stove, while her father spent two years in jail for his part in an antiwar protest. Raised in a rural California town, Michaels craved conformity, but eventually she came to share many of her parents’ long-held values. By a writer of uncommon perception, SPLIT offers a rare glimpse of a life that embodies a time (Vogue).