When Skateboards will be free
My reluctant political childhood
Said Sayrafiezadeh
Penguin Press
This is not an autobiography but a boys story as he goes from baby to child to adolescent in the shadow of parents active in the socialist workers party. So much of it rings true as the parents set out to change the world one paper after another.
As someone who has never sold a political weekly but has been a purchaser if many on matches I smiled many times as I read this book. Smiles in the sense that I have seen the events in these pages many many times. In ireland’s political landscape you see the paper sellers whenever a group get together to voice opposition or sometimes solidarity and support. I get the reasons why, 100%
These are real activists, working daily to turn the world into what they believe would be a better place.
And so Said saw the revolution not starting at closing time but certainly been spoken about almost daily and certainly weekly on whatever stall his mother brought him to. Underneath all the talk of revolution is a child wondering what’s it all about, not knowing the real reason for being in that pockets line. Accompanying him is his mother, deserted by the father of their child and married to the Socialist Workers Party. Her second marriage that didn’t work out for her. This is a memoir that encompasses much of what is wrong in society but where subtlety is key.
niallhope
