Written by an author with an unusual name and ethnic background (American Jewish and Iranian), When Skateboards Will Be Free is a remarkable and moving memoir of growing up with politically obsessed parents. For the most part the Iranian father was physically absent, having abandoned the author and his mother when the boy was only nine months old. He was, nonetheless, a powerful presence in the life of a child who longed for paternal attention and contact.

The memoir is a parable of how political commitments and preoccupations deform and destroy personal relationships and depersonalize the individual beholden to them; more generally, it is a meditation on the problematic relationship between the personal and political (or private and public) domains. At last the memoir is a penetrating and authentic account of a political subculture more typically portrayed with an excess of nostalgia and sympathy. The author writes:

my father is a member—a comrade—of the Socialist Workers’ Party. He is a leading comrade… . The responsibilities he chooses to undertake include, but are not limited to, editing books, writing articles, giving speeches, teaching political classes, attending book sales, demonstrations, rallies, meetings, conferences, picket lines … .

My father believes that the United States is destined … to be engulfed in a socialist revolution. All revolutions are bloody, he says, but this one will be the bloodiest of them all. The working class … will … usher in a new