Episodes In A Cultural Revolution

Episodes in a Cultural Revolution chronicles the journey of an American girl, first in childhood and throughout her adolescence into adulthood. During the tumultuous decades of a rapidly changing culture, from postWorld War II and into the 1980s, she took on every challenge in her way.A young girl who grew up ahead of her time feeling she never really fit into any of the molds or cultural expectations of her surroundings, she jokes, "I never really knew what a scofflaw was until I realized I was one."She forged her own path through childhood as a tomboy and into the fast-paced, turbulent youth revolt of the '60s. In the vanguard of a massive societal movement, constantly questioning authority and finding comfort in the fog of drugs and alcohol, she moved about from Manhattan to Mexico City to central Washington State to eventually return to her native Northern California Bay Area. Working a number of nontraditional jobs while navigating law school, she ultimately cleared the hurdles of becoming Oakland Fire Department's first woman firefighter in 1980.Episodes is a thoughtful, sometimes racy, self-examination of the transformation of a young woman from a refusal to conform to eventual determination to embrace the journey to herself.

-- Lin Gentry