cover image Walking to the Edge: Essays of Resistance

Walking to the Edge: Essays of Resistance

Margaret Randall. South End Press, $12 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-89608-397-4

Written from a Marxist-feminist perspective, these 16 essays, mostly dating from the 1980s, are consistently thought-provoking, although the logic is not watertight and leaves itself open to challenge. ``Coming Home,'' for instance, recounts her return to this country after 23 years in Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua and her successful battle to reestablish U.S. residency, which had been denied her because of her political views. While seeing her own struggle as a First Amendment case, Randall argues that she could not support a person's right to a fascist perspective, ``although I certainly support . . . defense of issues and people I respect''--the ideological antithesis of ``walking to the edge.'' ``Remapping Our Homeland'' explores the role of oral history in bringing to light the stories of native and working people heretofore ``subverted to stereotypical classist, racist, and sexist models.'' In ``Woman to Woman, Our Art in Our Lives'' Randall rejects uniqueness and originality as male standards of creativity, encouraging women to take a ``process-oriented'' approach that is fed by the ideas of other women. Randall wrote This Is About Incest. Photos not see by PW. (Mar.)