Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years 1960-1975

Also by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Economic Development in American Indian Reservations (ed.)

Native American Energy Resources and Development (ed.)

Indians of the Americas: Human Rights and Self-Determination

La Cuestin Mskita en la Revolucin Nicaragense

Indigenous Peoples: A Global Quest for Justice (ed.)

The Miskito Indians of Nicaragua: Caught in the Crossfire

Blood on the Border: Memoir of the Contra War

Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie

Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico

The Great Sioux Nation: Oral History of the Sioux-United States Treaty of 1868

An Indigenous History of the United States

Outlaw Woman

A Memoir of the War Years, 19601975

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Revised, with a New Afterword

Foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

NORMAN

2800 Venture Drive

Norman, Oklahoma 73069

www.oupress.com

Copyright 2014 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Manufactured in the U.S.A.

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ISBN 978-0-8061-4479-5 (paperback : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8061-4535-8 (ebook : mobipocket)

ISBN 978-0-8061-4536-5 (ebook : epub)

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In memory of Audrey Rosenthal, 19401967, who died in South Africa in the struggle against apartheid

and

in honor of all those, past and present, committed to creating a just and peaceful world

and

for the war resisters and deserters, and our political prisoners, who continue to pay the price for our struggles

Contents

, by Jennifer Baumgardner

Foreword

In 1989, I was a sophomore in college in a small midwestern town. A close friend confided in me that she had been raped during her study abroad. That experience provoked a flood of terrible memories of sexual abuse from both of her parents, but mostly cognizance of her cold, intimidating, irritable, and revered father having molested her. As the visions grew more horrific and her anger more intense, I remember telling her that if she killed her father, Id help her go on the lam. What else could she do?

Making this pronouncement, and even imagining the plan, felt far from scary at the time (although it sounds unbelievably risky to me now). It sounded, actually, like the only sane thing to do. What happened to my roommate was beyond comprehension to many people in my lifemy parents, most of my friendsbut I was beginning to see incest and sexual assault as frighteningly common.

Around this time, my older sister began coming to terms with her first sexual experience: being raped by a high school friend at fourteen while she was at a party, drinking for the first time, semiconscious. I was nineteen and waking up to the utter acceptance of violence against women. I was tapping into the power of telling the truth about the things that happen behind closed doors, screaming out the secrets that protect perpetrators and do nothing to help victims. The only way to make a difference in the face of this denial of injustice was to ignore rules, mores, and laws.

Also at nineteen, I first fell in love with radical feminist writings like those of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. In fact, I fell in love with activists like herthey were my Jesse Jameses, my Bonnie Parkers, my Pretty Boy Floyds. And yet I found myself stuck in a conflict. I was grateful for the insights and inspiration, but wished I had that culture of mass organizing. Why was I born in the 1970s? The movements I wanted to be a part of had come to a head when I was just learning to walk. I feared I had missed out on traveling a revolutionary path.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortizs childhood was anything but privileged, her years as a politico anything but timid. But in this book, Outlaw Woman, and in the new afterword Roxanne has written, I encounter her grappling with the myriad ways that a feminist has attempted to construct an ethical, politically coherent life. She writes of reading de Beauvoirs The Second Sex in 1963: It was the family... the basic unit of patriarchy and male dominance.... This was my rationalization for leaving my husband and daughter, certain it was a political move.

Already, you sense in her account the idea that simply leaving her family might not solve the problem of male dominance. The beauty of the book, in addition to its page-turning narrative, is her continual desire to remain self-aware. Each new chapter presents an opportunity to review past choices and understand her own motivations perhaps differently, certainly more deeply.

Over the years, I have come to terms with the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s. The deep belief that the world was about to transform into one where womens liberationists would be in the vanguard and capitalism dismantled didnt pave the way to that reality. In our present reality, capitalism is bound up in the body of social justice. There are corporate sponsors, social entrepreneurs, and billionaire men at the forefront of global health, and often, activists appear lonely, silly, and nave to try and work totally outside the systemto become an outlaw.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz calls herself an outlaw in this memoir because to abide by the laws of what was an overtly racist, misogynist, anti-gay, antihuman rights Americawhich is what the radicals of the 1960s confrontedwas to be an accomplice. And she was trying to change her personal script: a radical feminist who visited Valerie Solanas after she shot Warhol, Roxanne also struggled with her attraction to and dependence on domineering men. She writes of herself and her Second Wave peers: We were all struggling between the deep conditioning we received as females and our newfound feminism.

An outlaw is a deeply attractive identity, even if it ends in bullets and blood. But Im slowly coming to see that the true revolutionary understands her history, has visions of a better future, and faces (with courage) her own era. This book is a testament to how at least one outlaw woman evolved, struggled, and continued to make change. The story of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz inspires me to find my path, rather than pine for that revolutionary past. Im grateful to her and to feminists like her for that and for so much more. I show my gratitude by knowing my history, imagining something better, and facing the reality of today.

Jennifer Baumgardner

September 11, 2013

New York City

Preface to the Revised Edition

City Lights originally published Outlaw Woman in 2001. I appreciate the two great feminist editors there who worked with me on the book, Elaine Katzenberger and Nancy Peters.

Outlaw Woman is my second memoir and follows Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, which tells the story of my early life and ended with my move to San Francisco in 1960. That book, originally published by Verso, was published in a paperback edition by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2005.