Isadora Speaks

Essay, Memoir. Edited and with a preface by Franklin Rosemont. How can we write the truth about ourselves? Do we even know it? Isadora Duncan asks, in her Short Statements. Including letters, statements, poems, memoirs, short essays, drawings, photographs, and rants, this volume tells Isadora Duncan's own truth about herself through words she wrote and spoke during her lifetime. Starting with reminiscences of her San Francisco childhood and developing such themes as politics, communism, the transformative force of dance, love, education and women's emancipation, this book provides a lively and entertaining view of its feisty, sharp-witted author. ISADORA SPEAKS is a tremendously provocative and informative book. Here she is, Isadora herself. Passionate, sincere, moving, impractical, illogical and maddening. But alive. And it's quite wonderful to be brought so close to this gigantic personality. (—Agnes de Mille)