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Joan Gelfand
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Outside Voices: A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution Hardcover – January 16, 2024

by Joan Gelfand (Author)
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
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Berkeley, 1972: a hotbed of creativity where painters, filmmakers, musicians, and writers inspire a young poet.

Second-wave feminism, inspired by Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan is swelling into a tsunami. Women are joining together to change power dynamics in politics, the home, and the workplace.

On election day, Joan Gelfand casts her vote for George McGovern and boards a plane from New York to California. With one introduction to a woman musician, Joan’s journey to become a writer is born. Embraced by a thriving women’s community of artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and writers, Joan is encouraged to find her voice.

Mentored by paradigm-changing writers, Joan finds the courage to face her darkest fears through poetry and art, mining the trauma she experienced after losing her father and questioning her Jewish identity. Reminiscent of Paris in the twenties, Greenwich Village in the sixties, and Berlin in the eighties, Berkeley in the seventies was the “it” city of America.

Outside Voices reports the ups and downs of finding one’s way as an artist, living with a women’s band, forging an independent Jewish identity, founding a women’s restaurant, and becoming a published writer and songwriter while exploring the limits of sexuality and spirituality. The story includes road trips to music festivals in the woods, beaches in Mexico, concerts in Southern California, and a retreat in the Pacific Northwest.

A triumphant story of determination and will, Outside Voices is a backstage look at the women’s movement that sets the stage for decades of change. This book is a firsthand look at how the power of community emboldened innovation, social change, and self-discovery.
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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Post Hill Press
  4. Publication date
    January 16, 2024
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-13
    979-8888450048
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“…an engrossing recollection of the protest scene in 1970s Berkeley, Calif…. [Gelfand] conjures the period with clear eyes, giving flesh and blood to a scene so well-covered it can feel mummified. This stirring account from the front lines of the feminist movement enchants.” -- Publishers Weekly

“Joan Gelfand has written a compelling book about coming of age in Berkeley in the second wave of feminism circa 1970s. Her depth of discovering herself and her world is intense and reveals all the passion and confusion of a sensitive soul grasping at life through politics, sex, and the long road to becoming a writer.” -- Geri Spieler, Author of Housewife Assassin: The Woman Who Tried to Kill Gerald Ford

“Outside Voices is a mesmerizing, lyrical account of the heady days of the women’s movement in Berkeley in the 1970s. It’s a blast to follow Joan Gelfand, newly arrived from New York and still reeling from the untimely death of her father, as she visits communes, cooks vegetarian food, listens to musicians in coffee shops, and poses nude for a painter who seduces her—just one of many wild experiences during the days of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The heart of the book, however, is Gelfand’s search for her poet’s voice, something she discovers through the embrace of the women's community around her.” -- Frances Dinkelspiel, Co-founder, Berkeleyside and Cityside and Author of New York Times bestseller, Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California

“Joan Gelfand documents her thrilling coming-of-age ride through one of America’s most explosive and exciting moments of history. The book travels between the trauma of her traditional Jewish immigrant New York City childhood to the daring experiments of Berkeley, California in the 1970s. It’s not San Francisco’s Summer of Love, it’s the whirling aftermath. Gelfand’s prose buzzes with the beats and pulses of a young woman finding and coming to terms with herself and her past as a poet amidst a vibrant community of musicians, anti-war and women’s rights activists, and queers. It is a brave and joyous read, a timely reminder of how fragile free speech, democracy, the arts, and deliberate acts of love remain. Timely, delicious, and deeply honest, it reminds us how urgent the women’s movement and Berkeley’s imprint are in current-day conversations about democracy.” -- Elizabeth Block, Christopher Isherwood Foundation Award-Winning fiction writer, poet, and essayist

“Joan Gelfand’s memoir, Outside Voices, is a trip down Memory Lane for anyone who lived in Berkeley in the mid-sixties through mid-seventies, at the dawn of the Women’s Movement, told from the as-yet-unexplored point of view of a young Jewish Lesbian from New York. Grieving the death of her father, trying to find herself as a poet, Gelfand takes the reader on a nostalgic through-the-looking-glass tour of the radical people and wild places in Berkeley that informed her career as a critic, teacher, and writer. ‘[I]n Berkeley,’ the poet enthuses, ‘spring is stretched out like a delicious piece of saltwater taffy, all sweetness and joy.’” -- Barbara Quick, Novelist, Poet & Journalist

About the Author

Author of three volumes of poetry and an award-winning chapbook of short fiction, Joan Gelfand was a finalist in the International Book Awards for her novel Extreme. You Can Be a Winning Writer: The 4 C’s System to Author Success: Craft, Commitment, Community & Confidence is an Amazon #1 bestseller.

The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics, a film based on Joan’s poem about Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was featured in over twenty international film festivals and won several awards. A beloved teacher and mentor, Joan is President Emeritus of the Women’s National Book Association and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Joan holds a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College.

Joan’s work appears in over 150 lit mags, journals, and magazines including Huffington Post, LA Review of Books, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Levure Littéraire. For more information about her work, visit https://joangelfand.com

Joan lives in San Francisco with her husband Adam Hertz.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BYXGCQXZ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Post Hill Press (January 16, 2024)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8888450048
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

About the author

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Joan Gelfand

Joan Gelfand

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Joan Gelfand’s reviews, stories and poetry have appeared in national and international literary journals and magazines including the Los Angeles Review of Books, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Kalliope, The Toronto Review, newversenews.com, The Sycamore Review and RiverSedge. Joan’s work has also appeared in “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and the Unexplainable” and “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions”

Chair of the Women’s National Book Association National Writing Contest, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and a juror for the Northern California Book Awards, Joan blogs for the Huffington Post and coaches writers. She is the recipient of over twenty writing awards, nominations and prizes.

“The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics,” a poetry film based on Joan’s poem was featured at the 4th Annual Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece, the Meraki Film Festival in Madrid and won Certificate of Merit in a juried art show at the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Joan has been teaching at book festivals and writer’s conferences on “You Can Be a Winning Writer” for the past ten years. She coaches writers around the country.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Adam Hertz and two beatnik kitties – Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
10 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Bea Lott
5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2024
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Joan‘s latest book is a masterpiece on many levels. You can read the book for its full poetic beauty while you are learning about the courage it took for Joan to identify with the poet she always was.
You can also read it as a personal memoir of the Berkeley Women‘s Rights Revolution. It is quite a page turner and you will identify with her struggle to take in all the new experiences that shattered the way she had constructed a world for herself: “…since I arrived in Berkeley, a tectonic shift has rearranged the plates under my feet. It’s as if my cells are re-ordering, my skin regrowing…”
And while Joan is growing and learning exponentially, there is a deep joy and passion missing in her new life. Not until she deals with her upbringing and the grief over the early loss of her beloved father, is she able to discover her authentic self: “…the problem is, my childhood has been tacked away so tightly, I don’t know how to begin to examine the pieces. It looms dark, so sad, that I don’t have the first words to begin…”
It takes a lot of inner work to let that pain come out and you will feel honored to be a witness to her path through her grief and the healing and fullness that awaits her on the other side.
Take the book to the beach, read it in front of a fireplace, or enjoy it during a long soaking in your bathtub. You will feel warm-hearted all over your being.
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Deborah Grossman
5.0 out of 5 stars Outside Voices: An insider's lyrical memoir of Berkeley in the '70s
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2024
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Outside Voices is a masterful memoir of a writer's coming of age. This insider's story is full of lyrical imagery of post-'60s Berkeley and her pressing, personal journey to express what’s tugging at her heart, soul, and gut. The memoir poetically and graphically depicts life in the heady vortex of creativity and power in the Berkeley women's revolution of the early '70s. Supported by friends in a popular female band and a bevy of creative writers and artists, Joan discovers her voice through beautifully described journeys in nature, literature, music, and alternative healing. Joan's story will stay with you long after you've been at her side as she finds the words to express her love for her father, her Jewish heritage and her future dreams.
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Geri Spieler
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Memoir Of The Berkeley Revolution
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2024
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I can’t think of a memoir I’ve enjoyed more. “Outside Voices” is an exhilarating rollick through Berkeley seen through the eyes of an East Coast newcomer finding her way in the newly emerging liberal politics and liberated women’s movement.

Joan takes us along with her and her discovery of her own writing talents and relationships. Joan’s experiences as a young woman during the Berkeley revolution rang true for me. Her self-discovery and insights into the middle of the 1970’s were memorable. Such as one of my many favorite passages:

“Why are there gorgeous stately redwoods in a park adjacent to a drug-infested city where nefarious hymns whispers underneath green fronds?

What is poetry?

What is it good for?

Why am I here?

Why bother with all the hard work of writing? Around and around, the same questions, building a noose of stress that threatened to strangle me. I got the creeps, my skin crawling, as if every needle shot executed here was piercing me. I could hear the screams of every rape; I was in a war zone, feeling all the pain of the world: the battles, the power grabs, the poverty."

Following Joan’s self-discovery while healing from the loss of her father is a book that can bring solace and closure to any reader looking for an excellent recounting of the Berkeley revolution.
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Kate Farrell
5.0 out of 5 stars Outside Voices/Inside Story
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2024
“The personal is political,” so goes the famous slogan of the 1970s Women’s Movement; it also describes the deeply personal yet politically influenced coming of age memoir by Joan Gelfand, OUTSIDE VOICES. Joan so vividly captures the art and protest scene with cinematic, sensory details that I could almost smell the grease from Bongo Burger on Dwight and Telegraph. We walk beside Joan with an urgency to belong, to snatch poetic words from the air, to sing a new song—along the funky, fabled streets like Telegraph and in run down homes in South Berkeley. Joan lets us see how the feminist movement coalesced with anti-war protests on the ground, as it happened, making history: Just as the first wave feminists, suffragists, partnered with abolitionists in 1870s, so the second wave feminists came in with the anti-war movement in the 1970s. Joan was there, eager to take it all in, young, vulnerable, transparent.

In flash backs to her early teens, Joan shares the chaos of her family life and its traumas that underlie her gratitude living in a bubble of belonging in the women’s artistic community. In Berkeley she finds a home, but more importantly, she discovers her voice in a poem’s flaming words: “Tell it slant instructs Emily Dickinson. "This is about as slant as I can get,” says Joan. To experience the wild ride of feminism in Berkeley, sexual experimentation, and the courage of its women to BE, read OUTSIDE VOICES and be empowered. The fight goes on.
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YH
5.0 out of 5 stars A Love Song to Berkeley, Feminism, Creativity, and Young Adulthood
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2024
Outside Voices is a love story to Berkeley, feminism, friendship, creativity, and young adulthood. Exuberant, vulnerable, at times conflicted, Joan always holds her center even in a whirlwind of sexual passion and creative exploration. I was thrilled that she found her true love for literature and poetry, as she writes, “When I hear great poetry, I am transformed. The seas part with a life-changing revelation, the unknown becomes known . . . I hope to be that agent of change for others, the one that transforms something, the words that loosen the grip of others’ conundrums.”

Her quest for a creative life is riveting and courageous. While growing as a poet, she remains true to herself and her roots. Thank you, Joan, for your beautiful and inspiring book!
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Kelly Sullivan Walden
5.0 out of 5 stars Can’t recommend this highly enough
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2024
I've always been jealous of those who came of age during the Berkeley Revolution. But after reading Joan Gelfand's book and feeling like I got to walk 20-miles in her Birkenstocks (because it’s so damn well-written), I now feel like I’ve been there, done that, bought the tambourines. Outside Voices gives us an insider’s backstage pass through the very personal lens of the amazing poet extraordinaire, Joan Gelfand. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
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Top reviews from other countries

Simone G.
5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing memoir about coming of age with hope, creativity, and activism
Reviewed in Germany on March 23, 2024
Verified Purchase
Outside Voices was such a refreshing read, about a young woman who is finding herself as an artist, an individual, and an activist with her own voice. A deep sense of hope is woven throughout - Even though the author is coming from a difficult background, she continues to discover the world with optimism and fearlessness. The atmosphere of creativity, openness, and the willingness to take risks in Berkeley is so vividly depicted, it makes you want to jump back in time to try something new, and not be afraid to express yourself!
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