There have been numerous novels, films and memoirs inspired by the American radical left of the late 1960s and early ’70s, but Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s fascinating and affecting memoir, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young, stands out as definitive ... A meticulously researched history of an explosive time as well as a deeply felt, intimate portrait of a very unusual family.
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young (the title derives from a Jefferson Airplane song) is ultimately an account of being brought up by parents who rarely put him and his brothers ahead of their radical left-wing politics ... While Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young provides a minihistory of radical activity, both black and white, from the middle 1960s until the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the book’s most interesting passages take up its author’s reaction to his parents’ radicalism as a child and then an adolescent ... I concluded Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young struck by how much better it is not to feel the need to fight full time against the world but to feel instead reasonably contented, indeed privileged, to live in it as it is. Or at least to have parents who do.
The author’s unresolved and irresolvable Freudian psychodrama aside—despite being billed as a kind of a memoir, Ayers Dohrn’s childhood 'in the revolutionary underground' mainly haunts the periphery of what is otherwise a very accomplished biography of his parents—Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young arrives just as the specter of political violence (by which we always mean vaguely left-wing political violence) once again haunts American editorial boards ... I will bet the modest but not totally insubstantial sum I’ve been paid to write this review that every mainstream assessment of Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young will find its way around to telling you how dangerous and misguided the Weathermen were before suggesting—sometimes slyly, sometimes explicitly—that there’s a lesson in all of that about our own uncertain times. They may be right. But there’s something suspicious in any automatic answer.
A richly layered story that blends investigative rigor with emotional depth. Dohrn refuses to condemn or valorize his parents. Instead, he interrogates the moral and psychological complexities of their choices, acknowledging his own anger and confusion while asking enduring questions about political violence, responsibility, and belief ... The result is a beautifully written, deeply humane memoir, quietly devastating in its refusal of easy answers.
Playwright Dohrn debuts with a frank and fascinating chronicle of his experience as the son of Weather Underground fugitives, who were wanted in connection with the group’s 1970s bombings ... He provides no easy answers as he grapples with his parents’ commitment to their ideals at the expense of his and his two younger brothers’ safety ... This is a powerful blend of personal and political history.
The son of 1960s radicals confronts the tangled family legacy of social justice activism and political violence ... A unique family memoir that doubles as social history.
