>From New Statesman & Society
(London, England)
21 April 1995
[British novelist] Michael Moorcock talks to feminist activist, theorist and author Andrea Dworkin, and finds her keen to sort out a few false rumours.
>...Andrea Dworkin: "Both my parents were horrified by US racism, certainly
by de jure segregation, but also by all aspects of discrimination--
black poverty, urban ghettos, menial labour, bad education, the lack of
respect whites had for blacks. My father was pro-labour; he wanted
teachers to be unionised. He refused a management job at the post
office. My mother was committed to planned parenthood, to legal birth
control (it was criminal then) and to legal abortion. We had immigrant
family members who were survivors of the Holocaust, though most of my
mother's and father's families had been killed. So I grew up taking
hate and extermination seriously. I read all the time, as much as I
could. My mother often had to write me notes so that I could have
certain books from the library. After the high school board purged the
library of all "socialist" and "indecent" books, I found this cute
little book they'd missed called Guerilla Warfare by Che Guevara. I
read it a million times. I'd plan attacks on the local shopping mall. I
got a lot of practice in strategising real rebellion. It may be why I
refuse to think that rebellion against the oppressors of women should
be less real, less material, less serious."
-- Michael Pugliese