Most of my friends identify as anarchists of some stripe, and Emma Goldman comes up from time to time as a sort of historical woman badass. The biggest problem with this book for me is that it doesn't really cover Emma Goldman's politics or opinions much at all. I understand that providing more context takes a whole lot more time when you're also drawing everything, though. 'Hold on, what's happening? Who is this person? Wait where'd they go?' I thought to myself more than once.

Still, having big unexplained time jumps from one panel to the next, introducing people who are quickly shunted aside, and inserting single-panel developments leads to a reading experience that, for me, is a bit frustrating. I realize when you're condensing a life into about 100 illustrated pages, there is a lot you're going to have to cover quickly, superficially, or not at all. That one-which about Karl Marx-was even shorter. I've read one other graphic biography and encountered the same issues. I think it has more to do with the format than anything. I liked the art and I know more about Emma Goldman's life than I did before. I feel kind of bad giving this book such a 'low' rating, especially since I think it was well done. Featuring a foreword by Alice Wexler, A Dangerous Woman is a marvelously compelling presentation of a woman devoted to revolutionizing her age. Sharon Rudahl's lovely, energetic illustrations bring Goldman's many facets and passions to new life her work belongs with the critically acclaimed graphic nonfiction of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Emma Goldman was at the forefront of the radical causes of the twentieth century, from leading hunger demonstrations during the Great Depression-'Ask for work! If they do not give you work, ask for bread! If they do not give you work or bread, take the bread!'-to organizing a cloakmakers' strike, from lecturing on how to use birth control to fighting conscription for World War I, while her soulmate, Alexander Berkman, spent fourteen years in jail for his failed attentat against industrialist Henry Clay Frick.

'You are a terrible child and will grow into a worse woman! You have no respect for your elders or for authority! You will surely end on the gallows as a public menace!'-Emma Goldman's childhood religion teacherĪ wonderful retelling of the famous anarchist and radical icon Emma Goldman's extraordinary life, this graphic biography embodies the richness and drama of Goldman's story in a wholly original way.Ī Dangerous Woman depicts the full sweep of a life lived to the hilt in the struggle for equality and justice. The anarchist and radical hero Emma Goldman, brought to vivid life in a graphic biography by an acclaimed artist.

A Dangerous Woman by Sharon Rudahl