Editors’ Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Muriel Rukeyser. Although she is now known primarily for her poetry, Rukeyser also produced an extensive body of prose. In her accessible but philosophically complex work, she addresses issues related to racial, gender, and class justice; war and war crimes; the prison-industrial complex; Jewish culture and diaspora; and many other facets of American history, politics, and culture. Throughout her varied career, she produced biographies, film scripts and teleplays, stage plays, children's books, short stories, novels, essays, radio shows, and public lectures, as well as an extensive portfolio of journalism and nonfiction essays on the arts, social justice, and politics. During a period when few women were allowed to position themselves as public intellectuals, most of this writing by Rukeyser has been forgotten, not reprinted since its first appearance if it was published at all. By bringing forth a selection of Rukeyser's political, social, and aesthetic writings for the first time, this volume introduces a new generation of readers to a writer who was trying to think her way through a period as dangerous, promising, and painful as our own.