Every Secret Thing by Paricia Campbell Hearst

I bought this book a while ago, used, and it's been sitting on my "to be read" shelf for at least a year now. It came without a jacket, so it's navy with gold writing and smells like an old book. A few years ago I read a good book by Gillian Slovo by the same name about her life as the daughter of anti-apartheid activists.

This book is Hearst's account of her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical political group. She tells of living as a member for the SLA for 18 months, committing several crimes under duress, and then the trial that followed. I liked how she began the book with a short history of her childhood before describing the kidnapping.

I was very conflicted about this book. One part of me was very sympathetic to Patty Hearst. She describes being a victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as a prisoner. The other part, however, went into "skeptic mode" and found pieces of her story unbelievable or at the very least lacking support from within the story.

I checked with someone who was in his 20s when Patty Hearst was kidnapped since it happened before I was born. He says that once she was rescued and interviewed, the general feeling in the country (and in the psychological community) was that she was forcibly kidnapped and brainwashed into doing these things against her will. The book jacket suggests that the book will answer the "why" behind her behavior and subsequent trial, but I think it was poorly edited. Hearst did not come across as a sympathetic character. There was something about the style of writing that was very emotionally disconnected and journalistic, despite its obviously being a personal memoir. This distant treatment of the subject matter made it hard to connect to the content.

My "source" and I also talked about how much the media and the FBI/law enforcement had changed from that era to now (imagine, e.g., heiress Paris Hilton being kidnapped and held for 18 months!).

Now here is where I would like to trade in my mathematics degree for some language around feminist theory. This book was written in 1982 about events occurring in 1974. Putting the main subject material aside, this book represents a very specific state of women during these time periods.

Hearst goes from her father's house to her husband's house. The Hearst who is kidnapped does not seem to be fully actualized as a person, rather she is a wife with half a degree. Her description of her doubts about her fiance is that of a woman rejecting the housewife lifestyle of the 1950s but unsure of what models to consult for her life. Kidnapped, Hearst is a "damsel in distress" from the outside. And the loose activity around sexuality within the SLA is a sad commentary on both men and women. I wonder if Hearst's narrative seemed detached and un-emotional because that was her attempt to seem strong as a woman.

All in all, I like knowing a little about another piece of our country's history, but I am not sure this is the only book I would have liked to read on the events surrounding the SLA.