Author Description

Red Diapers is the first anthology of autobiographical writings by the children of American communists. These memoirs, short stories, and poems reflect the joys and perils of growing up in a subculture defined by its opposition to some of society's most deeply held values. How red diaper babies have come to terms with their political inheritance is the theme of this compelling anthology. Some contributors have fond memories of family activism; others recall the past with ambivalence or even pain. The authors range in age from their twenties to their eighties. Some, such as Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein and sixties activist Bettina Aptheker, are widely known themselves; some are the children of well-known American leftists, including Jeff Lawson, son of blacklisted screenwriter John Howard Lawson, and Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In disparate voices, the contributors elaborate on how their parents attempted to pass on to them the torch of radical politics.