The Change Chronicles: A Novel of the Sixties Antiwar Movement

by Paula Friedman

In the Sixty's predawn of the Women’s Liberation Movement, young Nora Seikh, full of self-doubts after an abusive relationship and a failed subsequent attempt at love, searches amid Berkeley’s budding antiwar movement for new ways to live and love, even while she struggles to find new paths to peace. Reporting antiwar news for the Berkeley Barb, she meets a flamboyant activist and, after a brief affair, is left pregnant and alone. She flings herself into the nonviolent vigil and demonstrations at the gates of Port Chicago, West Coast shipping point for weapons to the Vietnam War. There, she comes to share the demonstrators’ mutual caring and to quietly love Ted, a vigil leader. On the night Ted races forward to stop a weapons truck that will not halt, she must confront her old self-doubts and fears, and risk all—life and freedom and even the child she bears—to reach him. Taking this step, she comes to see her own, and others’, deepest need is to give love. Months later, Nora gives birth. No longer so self-doubting, still she cannot—in those years of the “baby-scoop era”—break through the overweening concept “a child needs a home with two parents,” and gives up her baby in adoption, “for his sake.” Then Nora must go on, trying to balance sorrows and hope—and to continue the struggle for a better world.

328 pages, Paperback

Published June 16, 2018

Reviews

[Richard Bunning]

This book is dripping with realism, with historic realities, stuffed full of the issues of the then still young baby-boomer generation. We are immersed, near drowning, in the real issues of a student body that feared the bomb: but feared man’s inhumanity to man far more. We are with the issues of the post-war generation that had to make stark individual choices between defying the generally respected government apparatus of their parents and grandparents, by radically opposing neo-colonial war, or joining the ranks of those that might have to kill as soldiers, or certainly by proxy, those fighting for their homes and their innocent children in distant lands.
As the body-bags and damaged young men, returned from the war in ever greater numbers a social divide split Berkeley, this read’s setting, then West-Coast America, and eventually the ‘free world’. Additionally, the boomer generation were deep in the already progressing struggle against racism and, as the ‘60s progressed, the drive towards sexual equality was gaining a long-dormant momentum. A tsunami of social consciousness grew out of the student Free Speech Movement, the roots of the 60s Counterculture, and swelled out so far and so deep that even today we feel its dissipated pull. Culture has seen fundamental change, despite recent pressures to reset the clocks of history from many right of centre and ‘religious’ groups.
Nora is at the centre of the social struggle, a child of the ‘50s, a daughter of parent’s born in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The older generation that had suffered the deprivations and often the full horrors of world war and who now struggled to understand the anti-establishmentarianism of so many of their kids. In 1966, the parental generation was as psychologically distant from the lives of their children as any times have seen. But quite naturally, establishment structure and deeply ingrained cultural expectations, hung heavy shadows over even the most progressive. No generation can reject all the expectations of their upbringing. Nora, like those around her, was struggling with her personal place in the world as much as with grand designs. This is so vividly drawn in this story as the young unmarried mother feels little choice but to give up her new-born child. This is a chronicle of change for one women in a social fabric that was constantly melting and reforming around her.
Friedman’s brilliant writing lets us see how the new sexual permissiveness of late ‘60s youth is overshadowed by old moralities. For example, we see how many men were all-too-ready to enjoy new sexual freedoms but without accepting the fullness of accrued responsibility. We see the young women, who are equally driven by new social permissiveness, but are so often left abandoned to face single parenthood, still then illegal abortion, or cruel adoption. The pill, though a birth control reality from 1960 onwards, was still years away from available to all but a few women; or in many territories and especially among their many religious and cultural groups, any women whatsoever. The 1960s were more about changed expectations than the progress that decade unleashed, just as previous history had paved the groundwork for racial equality, and the ‘70s would soon for the rainbow of sexuality.
Friedman draws us through every significant thought and fear, not just of the principle character, Nora, but her whole generation of educated, informed, and variably enlightened young activists. She represents a post-war generation that was desperate to change society, rather than just their own fortunes. As always, change brought mixed and shifting actions and conflicting opinions even between those that held aloft the very same flags. This is a book that in an equal universe should find a place as the ‘lighter’ but equally socially enlightening read, complementing iconic works from Weinberg, Ginsberg and so many well-recognised others. This book should be on the shelves, available to all those that seek insight into the social tapestry behind songs of Dylan, Baez and Lennon and so many more. This book is so much part of the essential history of those in my wide generation that fought with the banner, the guitar and the pen, and with the desperate but sadly naive conviction that the world could be made better for all, not just those blessed by God to have the most money and the most destructive guns. Of course, as in all generations the baby-boomers fill all areas of the political spectrum, though for a time there was promise of us really being something different; a truly progressive generation. So incidentally, it’s feels so sadly poignant that our now senior, empowered generation, is making such a mess of its responsibilities to humanity and this planet. But despite abject failings those that marched can at least find some relief in the social earthquake that is still shaking out new and profound chronicles of hopefully sustainable change, across so much of the Earth. Despite everything, the wind of change that blew from Berkeley in the ‘60s has left an indelible footprint on social history, and Friedman’s book gives us a glimpse into the countercultural foundations of our changing social fabric. I feel so fortified when reading Friedman’s deeply woven commentary on the early determined stands of so many of our post-war generation. This goes some small way towards alleviating the sense of shame brought on so many of us by the actions of the aging boomer leadership, which conspires to reverse so very much of what Friedman and her contemporaries achieved. Sad though many aspects of this book are the overall feel is one of positivity, a banner flown for the progressive spirit.
This is quality writing that lets one breath in the winds of change that may have lost its acute direction, but whose influence is felt in so many aspects of the world today, including currently in hashtag metoo, in the wider struggles for social justice, human rights and for our basic freedom of speech. We have hopefully passed onto our children enough social conscience to bring down the new savage capitalism and currently growing fascist tendencies. This is a book about some of the ordinary voices in an extraordinary movement, in the chronicles of change. This read is an intimate look behind the placards and politics of a generation that once dared to march, not for themselves, but for a better world.

[Andy Lake]

The Change Chronicles is a psychological novel working at several levels. It centres on Nora, a good-hearted, idealistic, mixed-up, self-doubting, damaged, over-thinking, radical young woman who desperately wants to care about everyone – and for everyone to care about each other – yet who constantly pushes away those closest to her. Parents, lovers and would be lovers, friends, colleagues, people who want to admire her, her child – all are pushed away or feel the rough edge of her often spikey and defensive tongue. She gets close to people, but closes herself off to love, sometimes perhaps hoping for something unattainably perfect, at other times by being brusque and judgemental.

There’s a central them of human connectedness, the yearning for it and perhaps the impossibility of achieving it. Yet nonetheless trying. And perhaps the trying is the thing. Though easily wounded, Nora persists in in taking a leading role in radical action to stop the Vietnam war and in fighting ‘the system’ – the system being the shadow that hangs over her, and the book as whole.
How can an individual take meaningful action against a system that is so powerful? The book observes several distinctive characters who pass on trajectories through Nora’s life and who are to different extents consumed by it.

Nora’s outlook at the start is characterised by hesitancy and self-doubt. Yet at key moments she shows herself capable of taking decisive action, inspired by care for others. Gradually, and in a convincing way, her character evolves through these experiences where she becomes a person that people look to for leadership. And – avoiding spoilers – the action and imagery in the epilogue make a fitting conclusion that sums up Nora’s development and where she ends up.

Paula Friedman has a distinctive voice as an author. It’s as if the third-person narrator is accompanied by Nora, walking hand-in-hand through the story, with Nora’s thoughts interjecting frequently. We get insights into Nora from outside and inside, and she never leaves the stage throughout the whole piece.

And through Nora we also get insights into the chaotic array and cross-currents of movements within the movement, and the choices around violent or non-violent resistance, commitment or posturing.

I really liked the novel, and it has kept me thinking about it afterwards – always a good sign. There was a point where I thought the story was going to be lost inside Nora’s head. But the balance between internal and external shifts in the second half of the book, with increasing tension and Nora’s emergence as a person who moves her principles and care for others into practical action.

[Paula]

One can hardly "review" one's own book, so here are what some critics and scholars have stated of The Change Chronicles--
"This is a book to share and discuss--a triumph." Wesley Hogan, Director, Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, author of Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America
"Tells the story of the betrayal of a woman--and a generation--with the raw intensity, vivid sense of place, and credibility of someone who was there." Maya Khankhoje, Contributing Editor, Montreal Serai; author of A Panther in Your Dreams
"Your book meant so much to me. . . . truly captured the essence of those difficult years. . . ." Sandy Musser, famed Adoption Activist, author of To Prison with Love and of I Would Have Searched Forever
"Beautifully crafted personal and political coming-of-age novel. Spellbinding." Mei-Mei Ellerman, Ph.D., Resident Scholar, Brandeis Women's Research Center

[Chenae Meneely]

Words often used to describe Paula Friedman’s historical fiction writing are “lyrical” and “vivid”. Indeed, those words well describe her new novel “The Change Chronicles”. But there is also a musical tone in this novel. Set in the late Sixties in Berkeley CA, the chaos internal and external experienced by Nora, the central character ring true. Always, underneath and then breaking through the intertwined stories of relationship, love and complex politics you will hear “Stop the War.. They are killing children. Stop the War”. This is the drumbeat. Tying many stories together Friedman articulates accurately and in a way that all generations may be able to hear, what it meant to build “The Movement” She touches many stories, in a tangential web of resilience. One that has to be told and expanded is what it was like to be pregnant in what is becoming known as the “baby-scoop-era”. What it was like to be known not as a Feminist, but vilified as a “Women’s Liberationist”. Such women’s challenges were denounced by men and women of the entire political spectrum The sounds of the time, the drumbeat will take you there, returning if you lived these times, visiting and seeing patterns if you were not physically present. A must read. A lyrical but relentless glimpse of power in unity.

[B. Morrison]

Friedman has written a thought-provoking novel set in and near San Francisco during the tumultuous years 1965-9. Subtitled A Novel of the Sixties Antiwar Movement, it is narrated by young Nora Seikh. At 22, she is still uncertain about who she is and what she will do with her life.

Her head is filled with the voices of others—an abusive former lover, another would-be lover, a pair of strict and conservative parents—all telling her who she is and what she should do. As she struggles to navigate the negative voices and figure out these things for herself, she becomes involved with the nascent Antiwar Movement.

This is also when the Second Wave Women’s Movement was taking shape. Having a female narrator enables us to experience the intersection of the two movements, the way the men in the Antiwar Movement downplayed the women’s contributions and discounted women’s issues as unimportant.

Something that people who came of age later might not understand is that we had no role models. Especially for women: we were in uncharted territory. We wanted more than the homemaker destinies of our parents. The pill had opened up possibilities of love outside of marriage. But in those pre-internet days, before Women’s History courses, we had no easy access to examples of how to navigate this new world.

In this novel, Nora has turned to philosophy but, dissatisfied by the men she’s been studying, she tries to puzzle out her own.

Having left the uncertainties of the early twenties behind long ago, I was less interested in the first part of the book which was heavy with Nora’s descriptions of her feelings and attempts to work out a philosophy that would give structure to the world and her own identity. My interest perked up in the second half when the balance shifts more to the actions against the war.

The characters are well-drawn and there’s plenty of action, especially in the second part when things get worse and worse for Nora, keeping the tension high. Nora’s emerging understanding of herself and her world continues to be tested right up to the end.

[Melissa]

An engrossing look at the anti war movement in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid 60's, especially the Port Chicago Vigil and the Berkeley scene as seen through the eyes of young female participant.