Writ­ing an hon­est and thor­ough biog­ra­phy of the dynam­ic activist Emma Gold­man for young adults is not an easy task. Respect­ed, even idol­ized, by her fol­low­ers, and held in con­tempt by her ene­mies, Gold­man was a com­mit­ted anar­chist who was fear­less in advo­cat­ing her rad­i­cal visions for change. Deb­o­rah Heilig­man presents a detailed view of her subject’s life in all its com­plex­i­ty. Whether read­ers are unfa­mil­iar with Goldman’s life and work, or aware of her influ­ence on move­ments for social and polit­i­cal change, Loud­mouth will offer new facts and per­spec­tives on ​“the most dan­ger­ous woman in America.”

Born in the Russ­ian Empire in 1869, Gold­man, like many oth­er Jews from East­ern Europe, sought a new life by immi­grat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Lim­it­ed by both anti­semitism and sex­ism in her native Kovno and dur­ing her school­ing in East Prus­sia, Gold­man was already rad­i­cal­ized by the time she arrived in Rochester, New York, in 1885. Work­ing as a seam­stress and in var­i­ous busi­ness endeav­ors in order to sup­port her­self, she even­tu­al­ly gained the courage to lec­ture about anar­chism, the anti-gov­ern­ment phi­los­o­phy that seemed the only viable route to social justice.

The Hay­mar­ket riot of 1886 in Chica­go was a gal­va­niz­ing inci­dent for the Amer­i­can Left, includ­ing­Gold­man. When a ral­ly for work­ers’ rights end­ed with a bomb­ing and police vio­lence, eight anar­chists were con­vict­ed of the crime and four were exe­cut­ed. Through­out her life, As Heilig­man indi­cates in the book’s sub­ti­tle, Gold­man remained ambiva­lent about her adopt­ed home­land. Repres­sion, denial of free speech, racism, and unequal dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth seemed almost intractable prob­lems in the Unit­ed States, yet, at the same time, Gold­man came to admire, and even love, the coun­try that would repeat­ed­ly try to silence her. She was impris­oned sev­er­al times, and ulti­mate­ly deport­ed, yet she always insist­ed that her strug­gle had val­ue. Dur­ing her tri­al, along with her for­mer part­ner Alexan­der Berk­man, for advo­cat­ing resis­tance to World War I con­scrip­tion, Gold­man explained her per­sis­tence: ​“We love Amer­i­ca, we love her beau­ty, we love her rich­es … and, above all, we love the peo­ple who have pro­duced her wealth and rich­es, who have cre­at­ed all her beau­ty … But that can­not make us blind to the social faults of America.”

Unlike many oth­ers in the broad range of the Amer­i­can Left, includ­ing social­ists, com­mu­nists, and fem­i­nists, Gold­man was uncom­pro­mis­ing in her belief that gov­ern­ment of any kind was oppres­sive. She would not work for women’s suf­frage, believ­ing that gain­ing the vote would accom­plish noth­ing for the work­ing class­es. She also insist­ed that polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion was some­times jus­ti­fied, lead­ing her to active­ly par­tic­i­pate in Alexan­der Berkman’s unsuc­cess­ful attempt to assas­si­nate mag­nate Hen­ry Clay Frick for his bru­tal response to strik­ing work­ers at the Home­stead Steel works in 1892. Heilig­man is cau­tious about judg­ing Goldman’s deci­sion, instead report­ing the events and expect­ing the read­ers to draw their own con­clu­sions. Towards the end of Goldman’s life, when World War II had begun in Europe, Heilig­man reports that Emma lec­tured about the hor­rors of Nazism. In fact, Gold­man opposed join­ing the mil­i­tary fight against Hitler, because, in her view, all gov­ern­ments were ille­git­i­mate. On the lev­el of per­son­al rela­tion­ships, always inter­twined with pol­i­tics in Goldman’s life, Heilig­man acknowl­edges the dif­fi­cul­ties and frus­tra­tions of Goldman’s love affairs, but also\ the last­ing ties of loy­al­ty she main­tained long after some of them end­ed. Fram­ing Goldman’s unstint­ing cru­sade to save Amer­i­ca as an unre­quit­ed love sto­ry con­fers dig­ni­ty to her life, but does not erase the trou­bling con­tra­dic­tions that marked her choices.