REAR-VIEW REFLECTIONS ON RADICAL CHANGE

Wagner gathers writings from 50 years of activism in this collection of prose and poetry.

While activism that addresses social justice and climate change has helped define our current moment, the practice is hardly new; many people, including the author, have been agitating for policy changes in these areas for decades. With this volume, Wagner collects her writings from a half-century of fighting the good fight, from her high school graduation speech (given in 1970) to reflections written in the aftermath of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests. Over that time, the “revolution” she was espousing meant many things, including an end to the Vietnam War, equal rights for Black Americans, reproductive rights for women, an end to pollution, and the legalization of marijuana. “The Revolution is not a particular person at all,” writes the author in her prologue. “It is the ever-changing activity of making our voices heard and taking political steps to ensure that those voices acquire the power needed for fundamental change toward a better world.” Wagner details the late-1960s / early-1970s milieu in which she came to political consciousness, a time when so much rebellion was in the air that even a girl like her—raised in a conservative Catholic family on a military base in upstate New York—began to question the status quo. College essays, poems, diary entries, and letters to the editor sit beside retrospective reflections on how the upheavals of the times shaped the author’s life—and how she attempted to shape the times. Together, they chart the evolution of an activist who matures and changes alongside her revolution.

Wagner’s writing is lively and emotive, no matter the genre—her passion and frustration are always apparent on the page. Perhaps the book’s most interesting aspect is how evergreen many of her concerns are. At one point, Wagner vents in her journal, “My despair and dread are over the political climate. The realization that fascism is surrounding me, while I am not able to accept or really see it, because I must live every day…When I must tell people that, believe it or not, this is what is happening. This veneer that ‘all is well’ is frail, thin, easily chipped away” (the event she’s reacting to: President Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984). The poems are mostly of the personal variety, offering glimpses of the author’s excitement and longing related to her romantic life and, later, parenthood. Often, politics still find their way in, as in “May 1986: A Reporter’s Notes”: “The head of emergency planning / For Com Ed’s nuclear plants / Must leave by noon for a CAT scan / His thin torso, fragile hair, sallow skin / And raspy voice give testimony / To the treatments / Fifteen years with the company / Expert in environmental sampling / Exposed to radiation?” While many of these writings can feel dated or insubstantial—unfinished or dashed-off works from particular moments in history—as a whole, they paint an evocative portrait of a life lived in opposition to the status quo.

An eclectic assortment of writings from a longtime participant in America’s protest movements.