There’s no denying that Jody A. Forrester is a product of capitalism, a system she tried to denounce tirelessly during her rebellious youth, as by writing and publishing a book, particularly a memoir, she committed a most anti-communist act. How bourgeois! How intellectual! Yet, memoirs are written by people with fascinating, turbulent, exhilarating pasts and Forrester’s Guns Under the Bed proves hers is a journey worth sharing.
In her memoir, Forrester returns to her past to answer the question of how she went from being a pacifist anti-Vietnam War activist to becoming a member of the communist Revolutionary Union (RU). She links her transformation mostly to toxic relationships and life-shattering moments. The in-depth analysis of some of the (traumatic) events that shaped her can’t help but make you care deeply about young Jody.
When memorising her formative years, Forrester draws the image of a child whose soul and spirit are continuously crushed by people who are supposed to love and support her unconditionally. She describes how her relationship with her parents was strained because ‘my dad was always angry, my mom always busy, always ready to push me away’. She also grew up fully aware that she lived in a world where ‘smart didn’t trump pretty’, that she was ‘too tall for a girl’, and that her ‘teeth were too big, my mouth too wide, my upper lip way too thin’, as confirmed by her mother, acquaintances and doctors alike.
It’s unsurprising that with such a youth, adolescent Forrester starts searching for an alternative family, a community united by a common goal. By joining the RU she initially ‘found a family with whom I fit, a family who didn’t care whether my hair was straight or curly, or teased me for laughing too loud’.
Against the background of the Vietnam War and the tumultuous Sixties, Guns Under the Bed makes for a unique story. In her attempt to find a sense of belonging by joining the RU, Forrester finds herself instead manoeuvring through a male-dominated landscape founded on the same patriarchal, capitalist ideals the RU so desperately wants to overthrow. Forrester’s initial dedication to and appraisal of the communist cause and RU are unconvincing as it’s obvious from the outset she’s nothing but a cog in a, frankly, harmful system: relationships with outsiders are discouraged, emotions are to be suppressed, individuality must be abandoned. Only rationality, the Party’s hierarchy, and obedience matter.
Forrester’s devotion to the RU never alienates the reader, though, as Guns Under the Bed is much more than one woman's political journey and coming-of-age story. The personal troubles the memoir deals with are topics that transcend time: problematic relationships, abuse, harassment, but also threats of a global scale that have the power to instil deep fear and anxiety in individuals (for instance, the nuclear threat). In addition, the memoir has a much broader historical and contemporary relevance in the way in which it addresses sometimes overt sometimes covert discrimination (Forrester is of Jewish descent and therefore it’s unavoidable she’s greeted with the occasional anti-Semitism), immigration and exploitation of immigrants, and racism.
In this light, it’s impossible to ignore the socio-political relevance Guns Under the Bed has today as the memoir grimly reminds contemporary readers of our own tumultuous times. The past doesn’t repeat itself but, rather, the present is a continuation of that past of unresolved social, political and economic conflict. As she witnesses footage of the horrors of the Vietnam War and race riots on American soil, Forrester notes that ‘the images assaulted me, and I sat there blown away by the brutal treatment done to the Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers, and to Black people on the streets by the police and National Guard’. Such descriptions can’t but summon visions of recent demonstrations and demands for equality and equity in the United States.
Despite dealing with these topics, though, Guns Under the Bed never becomes unbearably heavy. The memoir is fast-paced, reads with ease as each sentence flows neatly into the next. The memoir isn't short of beautiful language either. How can you not be awestruck with sentences such as ‘the deep wellspring of humiliation and self-loathing generated that day were the earliest seeds of a self-destructive sense of shame that would become my lifelong shadow companion’?
Guns Under the Bed is also a splendid feminist piece of writing that forces us to re-examine our definition of (female) beauty. In her search of finding a place of belonging and in her desperate need to be part of a community, Forrester ultimately finds some sense of inner peace and self-acceptance when she's, ironically, all by herself. As we live in a time where traditional beauty standards are increasingly challenged, the memoir’s lesson that one can grow to see the ways in which their ridiculed and scorned body can be an asset is invaluable.
Forrester might just be able to successfully move the masses with Guns Under the Bed. Though she may have disappointed her comrades, I'm grateful for her betrayal for without it we wouldn’t have gotten this impressive memoir.
Jody A. Forrester, Guns Under the Bed: Memoirs of a Young Revolutionary (2020), published by Odyssey Books.
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