Reading ‘Rebel Mother’ by Peter Andreas

When your mother chooses revolution over home

‘Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution’ (2017) by Peter Andreas

When I first picked up Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution (2017) by Peter Andreas, I thought I was simply diving into another political memoir. What I did not expect was how very personal and harrowing it would be, like stepping into a child’s shoes and being pulled through the tumult of a world not of his making.

I don’t even know if this book is considered popular or widely read. I just happened to stumble upon it in the city library, tucked away in the memoir section. The funny thing is, it only took me a single chapter to realize I was hooked. There was something in the naked honesty of the writing that appealed to me instantly.

I was especially intrigued by the family photographs dotted throughout its pages. Glimpsing the real persons in the book, snapshots of Peter’s childhood, scenes with Carol, glimpses into their odyssey, added a richness to the memoir that words alone could not have conveyed.

Some memoirs pull you into the intimacy of a family story, while others unfold against the sweep of political history. This book, impossibly, is both. It’s an extremely intimate memoir about growing up with an unusual, idealistic mother, and at the same time, it tracks the course of political struggles across…