Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen »

Susan Griffin has won dozens of awards for her work as a feminist writer, poet, essayist, playwright, and filmmaker. She is the author of more than twenty books including A Chorus of Stones, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of an Emmy, a MacArthur grant, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a frequent contributor to Ms. magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and numerous other publications. She lectures widely and is a frequent guest on national and local radio programs. She lives in Berkeley, California.

What does is it mean to be a citizen of the United States? Susan Griffin’s provocative investigation of that question takes us from the Declaration of Independence to the Iraq War, with many stops in between. Her conclusion: democracy is nothing less than a revolution of consciousness, and the revolution has just begun.

Bob Nardini Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

Griffin began her "social autobiography" with A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War(1992), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and continued with What Her Body Thought. She now delivers a third volume, in which autobiographical fragments blend with reflections on the lives of Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Jelly Roll Morton, and other Americans and with diary entries recording Griffin's thoughts on current events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. She aims to trace intersections between the growth of a sense of freedom in individuals and the evolution of democratic consciousness in the nation. "It is the inner states that generate and are generated by democracy that interest me," she writes. Griffin, also a poet and playwright, has written many books, and no doubt her latest will find its readers. Yet those who have not encountered Griffin may consider many passages, such as "I was more in touch with myself than ever before," self-absorbed and trite. Optional for public and academic libraries.

Acknowledgments xi

1 Liberty 1

2 Yosemite 53

3 Blue Jeans 140

4 Jazz 195

5 Song of Myself 229

6 Round 277

Bibliography 286

About the Author 293