Living for Change: An Autobiography

Grace Lee Boggs

Nov 2013 · U of Minnesota Press

About this eBook

"More than a deeply moving memoir, this is a book of revelation. Grace Lee Boggs, Chinese American, middle class, highly educated, discovers through her encounters with remarkable rebels, blue collars as well as philosophers, where the body is buried: who is doing what to whom in our society. It is an adventure that is truly liberating". Studs Terkel

"Grace Lee Boggs has made a fundamental difference in keeping alive the traditions of the struggles for freedom and democracy". Cornel West

Living for Change is a sweeping account of the life of an untraditional radical from the end of the thirties, through the cold war, the civil rights era, and the rise of Black Power, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers to the present efforts to rebuild our crumbling urban communities. This fascinating autobiography traces the story of a woman who transcended class and racial boundaries to pursue her passionate belief in a better society.

Grace Lee Boggs was raised in New York City during a time when her father was not allowed to buy land for their home because he was Chinese. Educated at Barnard and Bryn Mawr, Boggs was in her twenties when radical politics beckoned, and she was inspired to become a revolutionary focusing on the black community.

During her early years as an activist in New York, Boggs began a twenty-year friendship and collaboration with C. L. R. James, the brilliant and influential West Indian Marxist to whom she devotes a revelatory chapter of this book. In 1953, she moved to Detroit where, she writes, "radical history had been made and could be made again". It was also the home of James Boggs, an African American auto worker (and later author and revolutionarytheoretician) who would become one of the movement's freshest and most persuasive voices, as well as Grace's husband. Beginning with their work together on the newsletter Correspondence, Grace and James formed the core of a network that over the years would include Malcolm X, Lyman Paine, Ping Ferry, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Kwame Nkrumah, Stokely Carmichael, and inner-city youth.

Rich in the personalities and anecdotes of twentieth-century progressive activism, Living for Change is an involving and inspiring look at a remarkable woman who continues to dedicate her life to social justice.

Ratings and reviews

Grace, why would you lie on Jimmy and misquote him for your on malicious benefit, saying he said “I was male chauvinist” and calling us Black Man -- “Boys!” Just like a white racist man do in America! What Jimmy would say about chauvinism is, and it’s in my video on YouTube, is “This is a male chauvinist world we live in, and all males are chauvinist.“ That would include himself as well. It may be hard to believe, but Grace was like a Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hide. Most people see her only in control setting doing a speaking engagement. The real Grace run people always from groups, she undermine and manipulating people in back room. She work for years to undermine what our organizing was started for, the need for Black leadership in American. What Jimmy wrote and we believed in! She anti Black people who believe in loving their African Heritages and Cultural denied by racist in America. To her being a Nationalist was equivalent to being Nazism. Why, because you believe in your people, your Cultural! She loving being Chinese. When Africa/Black people ask her to speak at meeting of “so call” Nationalist, she would always said no! When I was elected to head our Political Education committed, Grace came over to me and said “I know more than you! I ask myself why would she say that? I was still learning from her and Jimmy etc. I learned knowing more don’t make you a better human being! It doesn’t necessary improve your Leadership ability, your Organizing ability, or ability to analogize the world and the struggles around you. When one of our members quit his job to work full time for us as our elected leaders, Grace criticize him from day one, he couldn't never do anything right. A member was teaching at a University was told by Grace “you don’t need a PH.D.” Why not, she teaching on a University level. Then when she did her dissertation on history of NOAR i.e., our first book on NOAR. Grace when to work to undermine it, stopping us from using it for internal studies saying “it was to academia.” If Grace would have been white, we would have called her a racist! She once manipulate me by telling me the women I was dating was slowing my development. Before I knew it we stop see each other. As I develop I could see how she manipulated everyone around her to get what she wanted. She don’t care about democracy, she work out side the collective discuss to make people (who honor her) agree with her direction. She once told me not to go to China when everybody was going, saying I didn’t have enough study under my belt. When they came back talking about their trip, I found myself giving them political leadership about it, and knowing more about China history then they did. I look at Grace and said, Grace they don’t know anything about China, or the Chinese’s Revolution. Years later I realize she was so selfish she don’t want me to go to China before she did! She was so arrogant she wouldn’t go to China, because she couldn’t speak Chinese. In her book she talks about me writing the introduction to The Awesome Responsibilities of Revolutionary Leadership. That became her albatross! I think she believed I would fail in writing it, but I don’t. I was naïve and I don’t sign it, believing that was best. Grace could have gave use leadership saying you must sign it. She signs everything she writes. People reading the pamphlet would talked about how powerful her interdiction was, and how they really like it i.e., her albatross! So, she uses that etc., to be malicious about me. She even to misquote Jimmy for her benefit, saying he said “I was male chauvinist” and call us Black Man -- Boys! What Jimmy would say, and it’s in the video I have on YouTube is “This is a Male chauvinist world we live in and all male are chauvinist.“ That would include himself. Why would she be so malicious. I never did anything against her, that not leadership, that’s being childish, showing her Classism and being insecure. April 21

About the author

Grace Lee Boggs is a first-generation Chinese American who has been a speaker, writer, and movement activist in the African American community for fifty-five years.