Ruth Price - The Lives of Agnes Smedley

The Lives of

Agnes Smedley

by Ruth Price

Oxford University Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Price, Ruth, 1951

The lives of Agnes Smedley / Ruth Price. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13:9780195141894

ISBN-10:019514189-X

1. Smedley, Agnes, 18921950. 2. Authors, American 20th century Biography. 3. Journalists United States Biography. 4. Feminists United States Biography. 5. Radicals United States Biography. 6. Espionage, Soviet United States. I. Title.

PS3537.M16Z85 2004

818.5209 dc22

2004014874

epub version 1.0

To David

For letting me speak

I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give him a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher but tell me not to use moderation in a cause like the present! I am in earnest. I will not equivocate I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard.

William Lloyd Garrison

First and foremost, I would like to thank the Library of Congress, my home away from home throughout the many years of this project. Without its extraordinary holdings, this book might well have been completed sooner, but it would have lacked the same depth. I am particularly grateful there to Thomas Mann for his unparalleled reference skills, and to Bruce Martin for ensuring that I always had a room in which to work. Thanks also to Sarah Prichard, George Caldwell, Carol Armbruster, Beverly Brannon, Jacqueline Goggin, John Earl Haynes, Virginia Wood, Chris Wright, Judy Lu, Allen Thrasher, Sam Andrusco, and the late Louis Jacob, whose reference assistance went well beyond the call of duty. At the National Archives, John Taylor and David Keppley were an invaluable resource, as was Henry Guzda at the Department of Labor. The National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities provided critical support at an early stage. Tappan Mukherjee, Elliot Porter, Krishna Bose, Jane Singh, Barbara Ramusack, Nirode Barooah, and Kathleen Suneja made the India sections of this book more possible. E. Grey Diamond, Robert Farnsworth, Lynn Lubkeman, Ruth Weiss Yeh, Jack Hamilton, Tom Grunfeld, Hugh Deane, Huang Hua, Luo Ying, Zhou Peiyun, Liu Liqun, Jiang Feng, An Wei, Li Shoubao, Lu Fu-Jia, and the SmedleyStrongSnow Society rendered able assistance on the China chapters. Todd Weinberg, Kate Waiters, Stephen Koch, and Harvey Klehr greatly facilitated my Moscow research. I am forever grateful to Tillie Olsen, Sharon Negri, Louise de Salvo, Robert Gottlieb, Arnold Rampersad, Carter McKenzie, Claudia LeMarquand, Rachel Gorlin, Chia-kun Chu, Joyce Seltzer, Sheri Holman, Ida Zakula, Sheila Keifetz, Anne Colcord, Judy Gregory, Donald Sheckler, Billy Privett, George Humphries, John Rojas, Martin Rosenblatt, Jonathan House, Judith Schwarz, Lee Anderson, Donna Sicklesmith, Lynn Goldfarb, Ken Locker, Robert Soloman, Birgit Schafer, Liva Baker and the late Erwin Glickes, Elizabeth Smedley, Florence Becker Lennon, Toni Willison, and Betty Barnes; to my agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman; to my editor, Peter Ginna, and, also at Oxford, Furaha Norton, Joellyn Ausanka, and India Cooper; to my dear friends Douglas and Tonette Jacob, Annie Ross, Lexie Freeman, Michael Mannion, Kira Ferrand, Frank Clemente, Bristow Hardin, Mark Splain, and Barbara Bowen; and to my son, Ethan, who has never known me without Agnes.

Because this book is about the life and times of Agnes Smedley, I have decided to use the Wade-Giles rather than the Pinyin system in the spelling of Chinese names and places, since it was the one in use during her lifetime and allows more name recognition for the general reader.

I may not be innocent, but Im right.

Agnes Smedley, 1932

The publication of of this book represents the culmination of a personal and intellectual odyssey that has consumed me for over a decade and a half. My acquaintance with Agnes Smedley began as a graduate student in literature at the City College of New York in 1976. At a particularly low point in that citys now forgotten fiscal crisis, I arrived at the Harlem campus one morning to find my path barred by police cars. Until the budget situation was resolved, all classes were canceled. Approaching the grim matter as a brief vacation, I headed for a bookstore, where my search for a good read led me to a reprint of Smedleys 1929 novel, Daughter of Earth, which was then enjoying a rebirth in womens studies circles. I spent the following days on a friends couch, mesmerized by the dark, raw power of Smedleys book. It was one of those stories that, when read at the right time, permanently alters ones sensibility.

What I have written is not a work of beauty, she begins.

It is the story of a life, written in desperation, in unhappiness To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty. I belong to those who die from other causes exhausted by poverty, victims of wealth and power, fighters in a great cause. A few of us die, desperate from the pain or disillusionment of love, but for most of us the earthquake but discloseth new foundations. For we are of the earth and our struggle is the struggle of earth.

Like many first novels, Daughter of Earth was a coming-of-age tale. But this was about a young woman from a family like mine a working-class family that lacked the emotional and financial resources to nurture its gifted daughter. Smedleys bitter exploration of the psychic damage sustained by her heroine, which no adult fame or glory ever fully redressed, spoke a truth I had not previously encountered in fiction. So did her heroines instinctive embrace of radical politics as an expression of personal pain. If this book had made such an impression on me, I wondered, why was its author so unknown?