| A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen Contributor(s): Johnston, Faith (Author) |
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ISBN: 0887556906 ISBN-13: 9780887556906 Publisher: University of Manitoba Press OUR PRICE: $26.06 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2006 Annotation: Dorise Nielsen was a pioneering feminist, a radical politician, and the first Communist elected to Canada's House of Commons. However, despite her remarkable career, little has been known about Nielsen. It is only now, after 20 years of painstaking research and appeals through the Access to Information Act, that her story can finally be told. From her youth in London during World War I to her death in Beijing following the Cultural Revolution, Nielsen lived through tumultuous times that demanded a response. In Saskatchewan, her rebellion against poverty and injustice and against her own constricted life as a homesteader's wife led her first to the CCF and then to the Communist Party of Canada. In the 1940s, when leaders of the Communist Party were either interned or underground, Nielsen was their voice in Parliament. In the end, however, it cost her. As a single mother in Ottawa, she sacrificed her children for her career; as a Communist living in China, she dedicated her life's work to a cause that went seriously awry. With vivid and evocative prose, author Faith Johnston illuminates the life and politics of a woman who faced daunting challenges with remarkable courage and tenacity, who tried to be both a good mother and a good revolutionary and failed on both counts, but who refused to give up on either. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Political - Biography & Autobiography | Women |
| Dewey: B |
| Physical Information: 1.13" H x 6.36" W x 9.02" (1.19 lbs) 392 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Dorise Nielsen was a pioneering feminist, a radical politician, the first Communist elected to Canada s House of Commons, and the only woman elected in 1940. But despite her remarkable career, until now little has been known about her.From her youth in London during World War I to her burial in 1980 in a hero s cemetery in China, Nielsen lived through tumultuous times. Struggling through the Great Depression as a homesteader s wife in rural Saskatchewan, Nielsen rebelled against the poverty and injustice that surrounded her, and found like-minded activists in the CCF and the Communist Party of Canada. In 1940 when leaders of the Communist Party were either interned or underground, Nielsen became their voice in Parliament. But her activism came at a high price. As a single mother in Ottawa, she sacrificed a close relationship with her family for her career. As a woman in an emerging political organisation, her authority was increasingly usurped by younger male party members. As a committed communist, she moved to Mao's China in 1957 and dedicated her life s work to a cause that went seriously awry.Faith Johnston illuminates the life of a woman who paved the way for a generation of women in politics, who tried to be both a good mother and a good revolutionary, and who refused to give up on either. |
Contributor Bio(s): Johnston, Faith: - Faith Johnston is a Winnipeg writer and former Ottawa teacher. She has a Master's in Women's Studies from Carleton University and her work has been published in Dropped Threads 2, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Other Voices, and A Room of One's Own. Her research for A Great Restlessness took her across the Canadian prairies, through archives in Toronto and Ottawa, and to Beijing during the 2003 SARS epidemic. |