Agnes Smedley: The Life and Times of an American Radical.

• Author: English, Deirdre

Agnes Smedley: The Life and Times of an American Radical. Janice R. MacKinnon, Stephen R. MacKinnon. University of California Press, $25. If it hadn't been for the reissue of her brilliant autobiographical novel, Daughter of Earth, in 1973, by The Feminist Press, Agnes Smedley would have been relegated to oblivion by now. Since then, many of her books-especially her reporting on China, which appeared in magazines ranging from The Nation to, of all places, Vogue-have found their way back into print. Even so, judging by her absence from books such as Radcliffe College's voluminous Notable American Women, she seems to be considered neither notable nor quotable by some of those who should admire her most. Smedley ought to be considered one of America's most impressive radicals, that rare breed of activist who moved to the heart of the revolutionary struggle without allowing her judgment to get swept away.

The MacKinnons spent 14 years, two of them in China, rediscovering Smedley's migrations from an impoverished and brutalized childhood in a Colorado mining town in the 1890s to the socialist and feminist circles of Greenwich Village in the 1910s to her years spent reporting on the Chinese revolution. They ask: Was she also running away-from her family, her working-class background, her relationships?

Smedley did not fail to ask these tormenting questions of herself. In the middle of her life they forced her to slow down for several years of psychoanalysis. She wrote Daughter of Earth as part of the process. The result is a marriage of personal and political insight. Her title reflects her feeling that she grew up raw, "primitive as a weed," in a family that struggled for survival in lawless western towns and mining camps. One time her father ran a team of horses for six months-only to be taunted by his employer with a...