How is truth defined? I wrote this down. I put a star beside this. I underlined this. I traced the ink lines of my words on the page. When I first went to Brooklyn, I wanted the red star tattoo that some of the old timers like Rena had. Sitting in the classroom I wanted it more than ever. I wanted some proof of where I'd been, proof it all happened. If not the truth, then at least this. Evidence. A testament to my faith, a scar to remember it by.Red Star Tattoo is an incredible and fascinating memoir of a childhood lived within the counterculture; from commune to cadre. Written in a clear and thoughtful voice, and with obvious affection for the parents who messed her up, author Sonja Larsen has produced a compelling life story. When Larsen was a little girl in the late Sixties, her hippy parents moved her and her big sister from state to state in search of a utopian lifestyle, eventually settling down on a commune outside Montreal. When she was eight, Larsen's parents decided to move once again, to Northern California, and as everyone knows that having a child along while hitchhiking makes the cars stop sooner, they allowed a twenty-something drifter to take their daughter on the road with him to their new home. This kind of laissez-faire parenting defined Larsen's childhood – surrounded by adults who would invite her to watch them having sex or offer her “baby hits” of acid; sent to an anything goes alternative school if she was sent at all – and although she knew her parents loved her, when they split up and she (at nine) was given the freedom to choose where she would live, the constant shifting between her dad in Quebec and her mom in California meant that Larsen never felt like she truly belonged anywhere at all.
Ever the idealist, Larsen's mother began volunteering for the California Homemaker's Association – running a soup kitchen and clothing bank, soliciting donations and handing out recruitment flyers – but as mom's new friends began dropping comments about the coming revolution and teaching little Sonja about dialectics and the evils of capitalism, it becomes clear that this innocuous sounding group is actually a front for a militant offshoot of the Communist Party. Personal tragedy and a feeling of not belonging force Larsen to move once again to live with her (now drug dealing) father, and when he eventually decided to marry his new girlfriend, Larsen determined to join the revolution and moved to Brooklyn and the National Office Central of the Communist Party USA, Provisional Wing. Just sixteen, Larsen would spend the next three years devoting herself to what was essentially a doomsday cult wrapped in a veneer of humanitarianism.
It's easy, in hindsight, to see what led Larsen to join what was in essence a cult: she didn't feel that she belonged anywhere; her parents had always made her believe that any choice that felt good was the right one; her mother's hippy idealism made her believe that toppling the power structures of society would free the downtrodden from their chains of poverty. And who wouldn't want to be on the winning side of the coming revolution? Once she became a full party member, it's also easy to see why Larsen stayed, even despite the abuse she suffered: she believed in the cause; she was selected for the inner circle; with sexual manipulation, micromanagement of her time, and working to exhaustion, Larsen was controlled in all the same ways used by cults everywhere (her story totally reminded me of Jenna Miscavige Hill's childhood in Scientology as described in Beyond Belief).
In the darkness of his office, I thought about the thousand different ways there were not to be strong enough. You could want things, like music or your own underwear or to hug a dying relative goodbye one last time. You could daydream about things, like taking a bath or spending a day alone or kissing somebody. You could remember people you loved or the life you had. You could forget why you were here, what you were working for. You could try and sleep all day, or not be able to sleep at night. There were a thousand different ways to be weak. But the only way to be strong was to stay.As the Revolution Day of Feb. 18, 1984 came and went without an uprising, a disillusioned Larsen was eventually able to break free. Now working with troubled youth in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, it would seem that the author is able to put her unique history, knowledge, and idealism to valuable use. This is an extraordinary memoir, a fascinating read, and I wish Sonja Larsen all the best.
