[This story appears in the current November/December 2018 issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.]
In the era of identity politics, an autobiography titled “Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life” might sound like a setup for a particularly proselytizing screed. But author Allen Young’s new 500-page tome is far more contemplative than contentious. It is candidly political and highly personal, a robust self-examination of a fascinating man who can’t be easily categorized.
Indeed, Young has inhabited many roles. He is a pioneering journalist and an established activist, the son of Communist parents and the patriarch of a Western Massachusetts commune. He is also, at 77, deeply reflective on what he has learned in a life that found him on the front lines of many cultural movements, from post-Stonewall gay liberation to Vietnam War protests to the back-to-the-land counterculture of the 1970s.
The rich depth of Young’s self-reflection is rare and special, but the author is quick to connect it to elements of community.
“I think I’ve always been introspective,” says Young. “I think gay men or people in any kind of minority situation are always examining their inner self. In some ways, you’re always asking yourself, ‘How do I fit in?’”
To answer those types of existential questions, Young looks back to his beginnings on a Catskills poultry farm, where the self-described “red diaper baby” was raised by Communist parents who were, he writes, “strikingly middle class in their values.”
Their son wound up well-educated, earning degrees from Columbia and Stanford, and spending several years in South America on a Fulbright scholarship. He subsequently gave up a reporter’s job at the Washington Post to devote himself to the underground press, amassing bylines with Fag Rag, Gay Community News and The Advocate, among others. Young eventually authored 14 books, including “Gays Under the Cuban Revolution,” an indictment of the anti-gay Castro regime, and co-edited the groundbreaking anthology “Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation” with lesbian scholar Karla Jay.
Young’s autobiography covers plenty of gay-related ground and traces his incremental steps out of the closet, a journey shared by countless gay men of his generation. But it also delves into many more twists and turns in the author’s life, including his arrests related to the anti-war and civil rights movements, and for growing marijuana.
In 1973, Young and four other men founded the 94-acre Butterworth Farm in Royalston, Massachusetts, a utopian-like vision of a rural, self-sufficient gay community. Though several factors kept Butterworth from enjoying its intended longevity, including the decimation wrought by the AIDS epidemic, it represented to many the radical potential of the era in which it was born. Young, the last survivor of the original cohort, still lives there today. He is semi-retired, but continues to contribute a weekly column to the “Athol Daily News” and remains involved with Democratic politics and environmental conservation groups.
Young’s reputation as a writer and activist is well-established, and “Left, Gay & Green” has received ringing endorsements from names like Eric Foner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and Stan Rosenberg, former Massachusetts senate president. But the history in its pages should fascinate even those unfamiliar with the author’s work, including new generations of progressive activists who can learn much from the experiences of those that came before.
“It’s important to know where you came from,” says Young. “It’s helpful to shed light on how people like you struggled and lived in the past. You have to know about the people who came before so you don’t go backwards.”
And right now, says Young, we’re sliding.
“He’s vulgar and mean-spirited, and the undoing of leftist policies and anti-science mentality is really disturbing,” says Young of the Trump administration.
But true to form, this free-thinker says he can find himself “disillusioned by dogmatic approaches” and extremism on the left and the right. Despite its title, “Left, Gay & Green” is actually an insightful look at a noble nonconformist who defied neat labels and, though always anchored in his progressive politics, has allowed his identity and outlook to evolve.
“Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life” is available now on amazon.com.
