Living My Life

Living My Life

first edition
Author	Emma Goldman
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Autobiography, anarchism
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (volume 1) Garden City Publishing Co.(volume 2)
Publication date	1931 (volume 1) 1934 (volume 2)
Pages	993
OCLC	42598818

Living My Life is the autobiography of Lithuanian-born anarchist Emma Goldman, published in two volumes in 1931 (Alfred A. Knopf) and 1934 (Garden City Publishing Company). Goldman wrote it in Saint-Tropez, France, following her disillusionment with the Bolshevik role in the Russian revolution. The text thoroughly covers her personal and political life from early childhood through to 1927, and has constantly remained in print since, in original and abridged editions. Since the autobiography was published nine years before Goldman died in 1940, it does not record her role in the Spanish Civil War.

Emma Goldman was born in 1869 in Kovno, Lithuania (then Russian Empire). Her parents Abraham and Taube owned a modest inn but were generally impoverished. Throughout her childhood and early adolescence, Goldman travelled between her parents’ home in Lithuania and her grandmother’s home in Königsberg, Prussia before relocating to St. Petersburg. Though much of her childhood was unhappy, as her father was often abusive, Goldman was close with her sister Helena and valued the modest schooling she received. In 1885, Goldman immigrated to Rochester, New York to join her older sister Lena and escape the influence of her father who wanted her to take a husband. Despite finding work in a clothing factory, Goldman did not stay in Rochester long. Enraged by the execution of the Haymarket bombers in 1887, she moved to New York and became one of the nation’s most notorious anarchists.

Goldman begins Living My Life with her arrival in New York City on August 8, 1889—the day she began her life as an anarchist. She does not begin with her autobiography chronologically, as she considered her first twenty years to be something of a previous life. As Goldman recalls, "All that had happened in my life until that time was now left behind me, cast off like a worn-out garment."Living My Life reflects upon Goldman’s time prior to New York as a means of explaining her principles and conversion to anarchy. For instance, she describes her employment in a Rochester clothing factory as an introduction to her antagonism toward industrial labor. Goldman claimed to work ten and a half hours a day and earned only $2.50 a week asked the owner for a raise, before she was rebuffed and found work elsewhere. Moreover, in 1887 Goldman "consented" to marry Jacob Kreshner, a fellow Jewish immigrant. This marriage, however, would not survive long. While Goldman attributes her husband’s disinterest in books and his growing interest in gambling toward their growing antagonism, the discovery of his impotence was the breaking point for Goldman, who recalled being left in "utter bewilderment" on her wedding night. Goldman recalls only being "saved from utter despair" in Rochester by her fascination of the events at Haymarket and her subsequent move to New York City.