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    Emma
    Emma
    Emma
    Ebook189 pages1 hour

    Emma

    By Howard Zinn

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    About this ebook

    A play in two acts about Emma Goldman, American Anarchist. In this play, historian and playwright Howard Zinn dramatizes the life of Emma Goldman, the anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker
    who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views, including her opposition to WWI. With his wit and ability to illuminate history from below, Zinn reveals the life of this remarkable woman.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9781456609887
    Emma
    Author

    Howard Zinn

    Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was a historian, playwright, and social activist. In addition to A People’s History of the United States, which has sold more than two million copies, he is the author of numerous books including The People Speak, Passionate Declarations, and the autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

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    • 4/5
      Well-written, fast read. Some excellent Emma Goldman monologues but the ending felt incomplete.

    Book preview

    Emma - Howard Zinn

    Titles in Print by Howard Zinn

    ARTISTS IN TIMES OF WAR (Open Media/Seven Stories Press, 2003)

    THE BOMB: Essays (Open Media/City Lights Publishers, 2010)

    DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY: Nine Fallacies of Law and Order (Vintage 1968, reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    EMMA (South End Press, 2002)

    FAILURE TO QUIT: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (Common Courage Press, 1993; reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    THE FUTURE OF HISTORY: Interviews with David Barsamian (Common Courage Press, 1999)

    HOWARD ZINN ON DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION, with Donald Macedo, (Paradigm, 2008)

    HOWARD ZINN ON HISTORY (Seven Stories Press, 2001)

    HOWARD ZINN ON WAR (Seven Stories Press, 2001)

    JUSTICE IN EVERYDAY LIFE: Eyewitness Accounts (Beacon Press, 1977; reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    A JUST WAR, with Moises Saman & Gino Strada (Charta Press, 2006)

    LAGUARDIA IN CONGRESS, (Cornell UP, 1959; reprint 2010)

    LA OTRA HISTORIA DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS (Seven Stories Press, 2001)

    MARX IN SOHO: A Play on History (South End Press, 1999)

    NEW DEAL THOUGHT, Ed. By Howard Zinn (Bobbs-Merrill, 1966, reprint edition Hackett Publishing Co., 2003)

    ORIGINAL ZINN: CONVERSATIONS ON HISTORY AND POLITICS, with David Barsamian (HarperCollins/Perennial, 2006)

    PASSIONATE DECLARATIONS: ESSAYS ON WAR AND JUSTICE, formerly DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE (HarperCollins/Perennial, 1990, 2003)

    A PEOPLES HISTORY OF EMPIRE; written with Paul Buhle & illustrated by Mike Konopack,(Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2008, graphic edition)

    A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE U.S., updated edition 2003 (HarperCollins/Perennial)

    A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE U.S., Abridged Teaching Edition, (New Press, 1997)

    A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE U.S., the wall charts (New Press, 1995)

    THE PEOPLE SPEAK: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known (HarperCollins/Perennial, 2004)

    THE POLITICS OF HISTORY, second edition (University of Illinois, 1990)

    POSTWAR AMERICA: 1945-1971 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1973; reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    A POWER GOVERNMENTS CANNOT SUPPRESS (City Lights Publishers, 2007)

    SNCC: THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS (Beacon Press, 1964; reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    THE SOUTHERN MYSTIQUE, (Knopf, 1964; reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    TERRORISM AND WAR, with Anthony Arnove (Open Media/Seven Stories Press, 2002)

    THREE PLAYS: THE POLITICAL THEATER OF HOWARD ZINN – EMMA, MARX IN SOHO, DAUGHTERS OF VENUS (Beacon Press, 2010)

    THREE STRIKES, with Dana Frank and Robin D.G. Kelley (Beacon Press, 2001)

    THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A PEOPLES HISTOR, updated. 2003 (HarperCollins/Perennial)

    UNCOMMON SENSE: FROM THE WRITINGS OF HOWARD ZINN (Paradigm Press, 2009)

    UNRAVELING OF THE BUSH PRESIDENCY (Seven Stories Press, 2009)

    VIETNAM: THE LOGIC OF WITHDRAWAL (Beacon Press; 1967; Reprint edition South End Press, 2002)

    VOICES OF A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE U.S., with Anthony Arnove (Seven Stories Press, 2004; second edition 2010)

    YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF OUR TIMES, second edition (Beacon Press, 2002)

    A YOUNG PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE U.S.: Adapted by Rebecca Stefoff (Seven Stories Press, 2007)

    THE ZINN READER: WRITINGS ON DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY (Seven Stories Press 1997, second edition 2010)

    PRAISE FOR HOWARD ZINN

    What can I say that will in any way convey the love, respect, and admiration I feel for this unassuming hero who was my teacher and mentor, this radical historian and people-loving ‘trouble-maker,’ this man who stood with us and suffered with us? Howard Zinn was the best teacher I ever had, and the funniest.

    —Alice Walker

    Howard Zinn, who almost single-handedly popularized a people’s perspective on U.S. history, never stops inventing new ways to educate ourselve.... Zinn is, quite simply, a national treasure.

    —Elizabeth Martinez

    PRAISE FOR MARX IN SOHO

    Winner of the 2000 Independent Publisher Award for best visionary fiction.

    A witty delight that will engage both new and old acquaintances of the Marxian corpus.... Even conservatives will find Zinn’s [book] ... an intelligent and diverting read.

    —Library Journal

    A cleverly imagined call to reconsider socialist theory__ Zinn’s point is well made; his passion for history melds with his political vigor to make this a memorable effort and a lucid primer for readers desiring a succinct, dramatized review of Marxism.

    —Publishers Weekly

    An imaginative critique of our society’s hypocrisies and injustices, and an entertaining, vivid portrait of Karl Marx as a voice of humanitarian justice—which is perhaps the best way to remember him.

    —Kirkus Reviews

    Finally a show by lefties, about lefties, that’s no preachy polemic. Writer-historian Howard Zinn has crafted a stirring, funny play that delves into the true meaning of Marxism.

    —LA Weekly

    By showing us Marx the man, Zinn poignantly humanizes him. By showing us Marx the theorist, Zinn gently educates us. And by bringing Marx into today’s era, Zinn cleverly and unmistakably argues the relevance of Marx’s ideas in our time.

    — Backstage West

    EMMA

    A PLAY IN TWO ACTS ABOUT

    EMMA GOLDMAN,

    AMERICAN ANARCHIST

    BY HOWARD ZINN

    © 1986 and 2002 by Howard Zinn

    Any properly footnoted quotation of up to 500 sequential words may be used without permission, as long as the total number of words quoted does not exceed 2,000.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Introduction

    Sequence of Scenes

    Cast List

    Production History

    Act One

    Act Two

    About the Author

    INTRODUCTION

    I was introduced to Emma Goldman (though not personally) by a fellow historian, Richard Drinnon, whom I met at a conference in Pennsylvania in the early 1960s. He told me he had written a biography of her called Rebel in Paradise ¹ When I returned home, I found the book and read it, more and more fascinated by this astonishing figure in American history. It struck me that in all of my work in American history, whether in undergraduate or graduate school, her name had never come up.

    This was an experience I was to have many times after I left school and began to read about people and events that somehow never fit into the traditional history curriculum: Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, John Reed, the Ludlow Massacre, the Lawrence Textile Strike, the Haymarket Affair, and much more. The people it was considered important to study were presidents, industrialists, military heroes—not labor leaders, radicals, socialists, anarchists. Emma Goldman did not fit.

    I was led to read Emma’s autobiography, Living My Life.² Then I turned to the works of the Russian anarchists Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin.³ I became interested in anarchism as a political philosophy, and discovered that it was outside the pale of orthodox political theory as taught in the academic world. Coming to the faculty of Boston University in the fall of 1964,1 was introduced to another new faculty member whose field was philosophy. Learning that I was joining the political science department, he asked: And what is your political philosophy? I replied, half-seriously, Anarchism. He looked at me sharply and said: Impossible!

    In 1974, while I was teaching in Paris, I made a trip to Amsterdam, and visited the International Institute of Social History. There I found a treasure trove of letters between Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, written in Europe after they were deported from the United States at the close of the first World War. I copied as much as I could on rough pieces of note paper, but when I returned home I found that Richard and Anna Maria Drinnon had gone through the same material and had just published a selection of the Goldman—Berkman correspondence, by the title Nowhere at Horne.⁴

    Through the 1960s and early 1970s, much of my life had been taken up with the movement against the war in Vietnam—speaking, participating in demonstrations, traveling to Japan and to Vietnam, writing about the American invasion of Southeast Asia. When the war ended in 1975, I finally found time to do what I had been wanting to do for a long time, to write a play about the magnificent Emma Goldman. My son, Jeff, an actor given his first directing assignment by the Theater for the New City in Manhattan, offered to direct the first production of the play in 1976.

    The following year, rewritten (as it has been after every production), it played in Boston, directed by Maxine Klein, with the ensemble group The Next Move forming the cast. It received glowing reviews, played for eight months, and was seen by about 20,000 people. In the years that followed, it played again in New York, then in London and in Tokyo. One version of it was published by the South End Press as part of a collection of feminist plays called Playbook.⁵ The play, of necessity, can only cover a part of Emma Goldman’s remarkable life

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