ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY BOOK CLUB
Monday, 19 January 2015, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
The Lives of Agnes Smedley
By Ruth Price
Oxford University Press, 2005
RAS Library
The Sino-British College, USST
1195 Fuxing Road Middle Road near South Shaanxi Road
上海市复兴中路1195号
上海理工大学中英国际学院
Entrance Fee: RMB 20 (RAS members) and RMB 50 (non-members)
If you are unable to make the entrance donation but wish to attend
please request exemption when registering for this event.
Reservations essential as space is limited for this event.
Membership applications and renewals are available at this event.
Book for Sale
RAS Library (Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday: 2:00pm-5:00pm)
Garden Books, 325 Changle Rd, Shanghai, (21) 5404-0882
By appointment: bookevents@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn
no eBook
About THE LIVES OF AGNES SMEDLEY (written by Oxford University Press)
Was she a selfless political activist? A feminist heroine? A gifted writer who rose from poverty to become a leading journalist and author of the cult classic Daughter of Earth? A spy for the Soviet Union? Or all these things?
Drawing on fifteen years of intensive research and unprecedented access to previously unpublished documents, this vibrant book brings to life one of the 20th century’s most fascinating women. Ruth Price traces Agnes Smedley’s unlikely trajectory from a small Missouri town to the coal country of Colorado; to Berkeley and Greenwich Village; to Berlin, Moscow, and China. Fueled by a fury at injustice, Smedley threw herself headlong into the crucial issues of the time, from Indian independence to birth control, women’s rights, and the revolution in China.
Her friends included such figures as Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, Emma Goldman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Zedong, and many others. Perhaps most important, Price uncovers an astonishing truth: Smedley, long thought to be the unfair target of a Cold War smear campaign, was indeed guilty of espionage charges leveled against her by General Douglas MacArthur and others.
Smedley worked to foment armed revolution in India and gathered intelligence for the Soviet Union, seeing it as bulwark against fascism. Price argues that Smedley acted out of a passionate idealism and that she exhibited a courage and compassion worthy of a renewed, if more complicated, admiration today.
Epic in scope, painstakingly researched, and unflinchingly honest, The Lives of Agnes Smedley offers a stunning reappraisal of one of America’s most controversial Leftists and a new look at the troubled historical terrain of the first half of the twentieth century.
"Masterful, beautifully written.... Price paints a vibrant portrait not only of her subject but of the many worlds in which she was a major player. Price captures neatly and with great nuance the complicated, often contradictory impulses and activities of these political movements. But at the heart of the book is her clear-eyed portrait of the very complicated Smedley, who acted out of humane motives but not always for the best causes."--Publishers Weekly
About RUTH PRICE (written by Oxford University Press)
Ruth Price taught English for several years at City University of New York (CUNY), has worked for New York city and state governments, and was press secretary for Bella Abzug, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, social activist and a leader of the Women's Movement. Price has published several works of fiction. The Lives of Agnes Smedley, her first nonfiction book, is the result of more than 15 years of work.