Clandestine Occupations

Diana Block

Description

A radical activist, Luba Gold, makes the difficult decision to go underground to support the Puerto Rican independence movement. When Luba’s collective is targeted by an FBI sting, she escapes with her baby but leaves behind a sensitive envelope that is being safeguarded by a friend. When the FBI come looking for Luba, the friend must decide whether to cooperate in the search for the woman she loves. Ten years later, when Luba emerges from clandestinity, she discovers that the FBI sting was orchestrated by another activist friend who had become an FBI informant. In the changed era of the 1990s, Luba must decide whether to forgive the woman who betrayed her.

Told from the points of view of five different women who cross paths with Luba over four decades, Clandestine Occupations explores the difficult decisions that activists confront about the boundaries of legality and speculates about the scope of clandestine action in the future. It is a thought-provoking reflection on the risks and sacrifices of political activism as well as the damaging reverberations of disaffection and cynicism.

Sujets

• Revolutionaries
• FBI
• Relationship
• Crime
• Thriller
• Federal Bureau of Investigation

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629631691
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Clandestine Occupations
"Through this fascinating novel, Diana Block brings to life stories about radical history that will educate and engage today’s activists. Her portrayal of a woman in solitary confinement rings true to experience, offering a raw view of the struggle for resilience under daunting circumstances. Through flights of imagination, the novel gives us hope for political transformations in the future."
Sarah Shourd, author of A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran
"Diana Block has accomplished what a number of writers have tried unsuccessfully capturing the profound revolutionary spirit of the political movements that emerged from the 1960s. Clandestine Occupations is also the first work of fiction set in that era to center women, not just one strong female character. It is a work filled with suspense, intrigue, ideas, and love. Nothing else has come near illustrating the slogan of the time, ‘the personal is political.’"
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States
"Diana Block creates a vivid and engaging tapestry of political passions interwoven with the intricacies of personal relationships. Clandestine Occupations takes us into the thoughts and feelings of six different women as each, in her own way, grapples with choices about how to live and act in a world rife with oppression but also brightened by rays of humanity and hope."
David Gilbert, political prisoner, author of Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond
"In evocative yet unsentimental prose, Block transports us into the world of radical activism, clandestine organizing, feminism, persecution, and prison. A gripping read for both those familiar with the 1970s or new to its rich history of political organizing."
Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
"Diana Block once again challenges our understanding of the ethical essence of revolution. Beyond political theory and practice, the moral dilemmas and turmoils are constant and consistent. Where does your loyalty lie, how does your dedication confront obstacles? These are the questions found in these pages as Diana searches for a just balance in human relationships and politics. Clandestine Occupations captures and occupies the heart and spirit, teaching us what it means to be genuine and sincere in revolutionary life and love."
Jalil Muntaqim, political prisoner, author of We Are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings
"Diana Block’s novel Clandestine Occupations is an engrossing, deeply moving, page-turning feminist thriller: a walk on the noir side of society’s leftist edges of hideouts, prisons, pseudonyms, betrayals, and loyalties. At the same time it is an emotional exploration of relationships: mother/daughter, gay/straight, in jail/outside jail.
"Block writes in a compelling authentic voice as she follows six characters beginning in 1986 and projects into the immediate future up to 2020 through four decades of their intertwining lives. Each person’s story reveals another piece of the suspenseful plot as the protests of the past inform the present (and even the future).
"You cannot stand outside this novel. It demands that readers reflect on our own lives and the intimate changes we made, and are making to the swiftly moving global flow of history. Clandestine Operations helps us examine our personal and political interconnections and in spite of it all our surviving capacity for love."
Nina Serrano, prize-winning poet, 2014 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature
"At the crossroad of the personal and the political, Diana Block’s new book is the first major novel taking us to the world of the women who in the 1960 and ’70s opted for clandestine struggle. Powerfully written, it is an uncompromising denunciation of social and institutional injustice, and an honest confrontation with the dilemmas we must face as we encounter it in our daily life. It is also a story of female and intergenerational solidarity bringing us voices we cannot ignore. Read this book."
Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch
"In this poignant and moving novel, Diana Block writes a story, rich in complexity and engaging to read, that interweaves people and issues too often ignored in the literature on prisons and radical history. Her writing exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class gets us to feel the dilemmas and dreams of women forced to make tough choices. She writes with an intimate knowledge of prison life, mothering in clandestinity, and activism, and her characters jump out as real and textured. Like Schenkkan’s Kentucky Cycle or Sayles’s Lone Star , Block’s stories intertwine across generations, race, and difference in complicated and unexpected ways."
Diane C. Fujino, professor of Asian-American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama
"Diana Block’s novel shows why well-written fiction may be the most honest and profound way to recount history. Clandestine Occupations does just that, projecting from inner lives to outer events, and in the process illuminating our understanding of both. This is a lovely and necessary book."
Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner and editor of The War Before: The True Life Story of Safiya Bukhari
" Clandestine Occupations is a triumph of passion and force. A number of memoirs and other nonfiction works by revolutionaries from the 1970s and ’80s, including one by Block herself, have given us partial pictures of what a committed life, sometimes lived underground, was like. But there are times when only fiction can really take us there. A marvelous novel that moves beyond all preconceived categories."
Margaret Randall, author of Sandino’s Daughters and Che on My Mind

Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History
Diana Block © 2015
This edition © 2015 PM Press
ISBN: 9781629631219
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930896
"Clandestine Kisses" by Marilyn Buck, from INSIDE/OUT: Selected Poems , reprinted by permission of City Lights Publishers
PM Press
P.O. Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
pmpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover: John Yates/ Stealworks.com
Layout: Jonathan Rowland
Printed by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
For
Luba Simon Block, 1915–1977
Marilyn Buck, 1947–2010
Jalil Muntaqim, 1951 and still going strong!
And for all the ancestors, comrades, friends, lovers, daughters, sons, prisoners, and freedom fighters who inspired this imaginary history.
Clandestine Kisses
by Marilyn Buck, for Linda and her love
kisses
bloom on lips
which have already spoken
stolen clandestine kisses
a prisoner kisses
she is defiant
she breaks the rules
she traffics in contraband women’s kisses
a crime wave of kisses
bitter sweet sensuality
flouting women-hating satraps
in their prison fiefdoms
furious
that love
can not be arrested
From INSIDE/OUT: Selected Poems City Lights Publishers
Timeline Highlights 1970 Luba, Cassandra, and Rahim meet in Cuba on the Venceremos Brigade 1973 Sage moves to San Francisco from Chicago 1975 Uprising organization formed 1976 Cassandra is arrested for the first time 1977 Rahim is arrested 1978 Cassandra escapes from prison 1978 Sage starts visiting Rahim at San Quentin 1979 William Morales, Puerto Rican political prisoner, liberated from prison 1979 Assata Shakur, Black Liberation Army political prisoner, liberated from prison 1982 Rahim transferred from San Quentin to Pennsylvania prison 1983 Sage leaves Uprising 1983 Joan moves to Chicago from Indianapolis 1984 Joan meets Reynaldo 1984 Sage meets Brooke, her life partner 1984 Sage starts working at Hanover Foundation 1984 Luba AKA Lynne meets Belinda while living underground in Los Angeles 1985 Luba in Chicago on a brief break from her underground life; meets Joan 1985 Puerto Rican Macheteros celebrate Three Kings Day with gifts to community 1985 Luba gives birth to Nick and escapes FBI encirclement 1986 Cassandra recaptured in Chicago; Luba and her collective placed on 10 Most Wanted list 1994 Joan and Luba encounter each other in Pittsburgh writing class 1995 Luba surfaces with Nick and other collective members in Chicago 1995 Luba returns to the Bay Area 1996 Unshackled Women organization formed 2005 Rahim in SF County Jail facing charges from 1974 cold case 2007 Maggie sees Luba at a parole hearing in Sacramento 2007 Maggie meets Rahim as a hospital patient 2008 Charges against Rahim dropped; he is sent back to Pennsylvania prison 2009 Anise visits Cassandra in prison 2010 Cassandra dies a couple of weeks after "compassionate" release 2011 Occupy movement begins 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza, Ferguson uprising, Black Lives Matter movement is born 2019 #BreaktheBracelet goes viral, and the Urban Maroon movement is born
Birth Years Cassandra 1948 Rahim 1949 Luba 1950 Sage 1951 Belinda 1952 Joan 1961 Maggie 1965 Nick 1985 Anise 1988 Gordon 1989
Contents
1986 Missing Belinda
1995 AKA Joan
2005 Caged Sage
2007 Camouflage Maggie
2010 Release Anise
2020 Lands End Luba
MISSING BELINDA 1986
A T FIRST I WASN ’ T WORRIED WHEN L YNNE DISAPPEARED FROM MY LIFE . S HE HAD DISAP peared before and returned. It was August in Los Angeles, and all the people who can get away pack their bags. If I could, I too would