Bitch: Berkeley During the Nixon Years

ISBN-10: 0985100915
ISBN-13: 9780985100919
Series: Bitch
Language: English
Published: 2018-02-10
Author: michael ulin edwards

Description

Enter the University of California Berkeley as a freshman in September 1968, and ride: Zach [academia], Niles [revolution, radicalism, anarchy], Desiree [political movements, women's lib and feminism], Cassey [sororities, Vietnam] and a year later, Lee [art]. Each student has agenda which are tracked and developed. Readers live each life during five years in Berkeley.Head on the students are hit by the mystery, the spontaneity and the surprise of fractious political and diverse social movements and riots hitting the University and Berkeley and the campus area: Eldridge Cleaver course; Third World Colleges; Peoples Park ending in June 1969. Anti-war activities; political movements from radicalism and anarchy to women's lib and feminism; and the anti-War movements including Kent State and attacks on campuses until Summer 1970, Academia evaporated in the swirl.The following years the students were less buffeted by University and town events. Niles analyzed why: Issues were national or local in orientation and effect. The national issue of the anti-War movements prevailed in 1970, which disappeared at War's end. Having been set aside, local issues were unsupported leaving Berkeley inhabitants to militate for goals without immediate political organization.By June 1973 the five students were educated by the street far beyond classroom teaching. Like the University, the City, Berkeley natives and visitors, the students were exhausted. They each had lived a half-life.The novel includes hundreds of footnotes, a bibliography and a lexicon of the Sixties.