Guns Under The Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary

“Jody Forrester’s memoir is at once an important eyewitness account of how American student activism in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s turned radical, and a portrait of a young woman’s struggle to find her way in the world. Guns Under the Bed traces her journey from innocence to experience, and, in doing so, offers lessons that resonate today. Heartbreaking and edifying, this story is difficult to forget.”

“Evocative, compelling, terrifying, sad, and ultimately triumphant. A classic coming of age narrative about a woman who seeks a sense of belonging that she doesn’t find in her family or her body.”

“Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary by Jody A. Forrester is a raw, honest memoir about a woman’s path to expressing her beliefs and living her own truth. She was just a teenager in the Sixties—a love child caught up in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war era. A pacifist and activist, she wanted nothing more than to be heard, bring the war to an end, and live in a more peaceful society. The times were fraught with civil unrest, culture clashes, and political firestorms. From there she became a strong revolutionary, ready and willing to topple the ruling elite of the United States in the name of fairness and equality. She joined a Communist organization and became fully immersed in Mao Tse Tung’s philosophy of class warfare. But how did this leap happen? And why? Can a peaceful hippie-type really transition to the opposite side of things—a side where she literally slept with two rifles under her bed?

Forrester has to delve back into her childhood to give you these answers, and she does with poetic poignancy and an honesty that will startle you. Like many adolescents, she was out to find herself, speak out, and make a change in the world. Her way. It’s as if she took a journey from innocence to experience, where sometimes ideals, values, and beliefs can be tarnished by disillusionment. Her coming-of-age autobiography reveals that her internal upheaval mirrored the external upheaval around her. In light of today’s civil unrest, I think it would be a good book for the YA audience as Forrester dives back into her past and puts her secrets, strife, and struggles on display in a way that is helpful and supportive. It’s a lesson in finding out who you are and what you believe in, and having the courage to live it in the face of adversity. It’s also about honesty and knowing when it’s time to move on. Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary by Jody A. Forrester is a cutting-edge memoir that echoes today’s troubled times.”

“Jody Forrester’s memoir chronicles her childhood and young adulthood in 60s and 70s California. It’s a highly personal story rooted in a public, political setting, recounting Jody’s teenage embrace of the free love and psychedelic miasma of 60s Los Angeles, her political awakening as part of the movement opposing the Vietnam War, her years in San Jose as an active member of the Revolutionary Union (RU) - a communist organisation advocating armed revolution to bring about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally her disillusionment and traumatic breaking from this organisation and community.

The mix of political and personal is a theme that really drives the drama. The transition from flower child to armed revolutionary was at heart a personal one, driven by love/lust for someone who was already a member of the RU and by the pull of ready-made community to a young woman who had always felt out of place. After years of tension between Jody’s earnest desire to give up self to the collective and her empathetic inability to prioritise that over the thoughts and feelings of real people standing in front of her, disillusionment finally comes when the RU community betrays her in a very personal way.

There is something both visceral and thoughtful about the narration. Jody’s younger-self protagonist is brutally vulnerable. The detailed and scenic honesty with which her experiences are recounted is startling - and sometimes disquieting. It’s a privilege as a reader to be allowed to glimpse this person’s life through such a close lens, to see things as she did, to feel so close to her.

Then there’s the overlay of the older writer, looking back on her youth. The reader is first carried along with the narrator’s perception of ridiculousness, of disbelief and even of shame at how she ever got to the point where she was sleeping with two rifles under the bed, where years of her life were dedicated to a revolutionary movement while the normal experiences of young adulthood passed her by. Then we accompany her on a journey not just to uncover but to understand her past. Her insights on the hows and whys are specific to her particular story but also feel universal - in different eras and different contexts, we’ve all felt something of that desire to belong and to change the world for the better. My closest comparison of the experience of reading this book is Stasiland (Anna Funder), which has that same sense of philosophical yet personal investigation of the crazy situations we humans get ourselves into, individually and en masse.

On reaching the end of the book, when the author has finally wiped the dust off each of those hidden years and held them up to the light, she acknowledges a truth that evaded her before. The spirit and heart that drove her through these chapters of her young life are not to be despised or considered shameful, but to be understood and embraced. It’s a release and a freedom that I felt alongside her - a note of triumph on which to end.

I’m really glad I didn’t miss this book, and it’s inspired me to put more of its kind on my reading list. ”

“Every memoir turns on a fundamental question: How did a person like this get into a place like that? In Jody Forrester’s case the question becomes distinctly fraught: How did a middle-class white girl from LA find herself a member of a deluded Maoist sect, armed to the teeth and prepared to die for the revolution? Her odyssey through the last days of the mythical 1960’s touches all the sweet spots of that time even as it illuminates some of its more shadowy corners: our red-hot anger at war and racism, our alienation from the hollow promises of a corrupt establishment, and our certainty that we could heal our hurting hearts and at the same time transform the world into a place of joy and justice. But of course there are no universals—Forrester’s journey is uniquely hers, and hers alone—no easy answers, and no casual causal claims. We see a young woman bursting to live, determined to find meaning in her life, and—for all of her mistakes and miscalculations—a woman with the courage to storm the heavens.”

“Don’t let the Gun title put you off, Jody’s not a strident revolutionary – she’s a thoughtful vulnerable one. This is as much of a young woman’s ‘coming of age’ story during the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll 1960s as it is a (former) radical activist memoir. For far too long the story of “The Movement” has only been told in men’s voices – this woman’s perspective is refreshing and important.”

“Back in 1969, Jody A. Forrester and I led similar lives, though I was never as radical as she was. She lived on the West Coast and I in mid America, yet we both moved from being Age of Aquarius love children to pacificism. In the 1970s, she shifted to a more radical stance, leaving behind her beliefs that love could conquer all and turn the world into a just place. She became a member of the Revolutionary Union, a Communist organization advocating armed overthrow of the ruling class. Her ex-lover brought guns home, and she slept with them under the bed, fully prepared for a shoot-out with the Feds and equally prepared to die for her beliefs. 

Jody captures the spirit of the late 60s and early 70s, the movement against the war in Vietnam, the feeling that capitalism, racism, and anti-semitism were running rampant in America and destroying the values the US was founded upon.

Jody’s journey to militancy began in her childhood, and she delved deeply into the memories of what made her what she became. She learned that her politics were not merely politics but expressions of the woman her childhood made her. Part coming of age story and part political tract, Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary tells of Jody’s struggle to find a place where she belonged, a security not offered by her genetic family. A tall, gangly woman, she’s not the perfect daughter her mother wishes for. With the Revolutionary Union, Jody begins her search for self-acceptance.”

“America in 1969: the times were out of joint, and 18-year-old Jody Forrester threw herself into trying to set them right. But changing the world is hard, even if you are part of a much larger, more strategically savvy and more supportive organization than the one Jody joined, and even if your foe is not as formidable and ruthless as the one then waging a near-genocidal war in Vietnam and unleashing Red Squads, spies and assassins on dissidents at home. For three all-consuming years Jody went all in while wrestling internally with the issues of means-and-ends, violence-and-non-violence, that have bedeviled revolutionaries for generations, as well as with her own demons. It was a hard road, and a chapter in her life that did not end well and took many years to process. But she came out stronger and with her ideals intact on the other side. And the story she tells about the experience in Guns Under the Bed has that quality that all good and great books have: it leaves the reader wanting more.”