A Story
of Self-Discovery,
Survival,
and Power
Author Lin Gentry Takes You Along Her Journey
Current Book Available:
Episodes in a Cultural Revolution
Episodes in a Cultural Revolution chronicles the journey of an American girl, first in childhood and throughout her adolescence into adulthood. During the tumultuous decades of a rapidly changing culture, from post-World War II and into the 1980s, she took on every challenge in her way.
A young girl who grew up ahead of her time feeling she never really fit into any of the molds or cultural expectations of her surroundings, she jokes, “I never really knew what a scofflaw was until I realized I was one.”
She forged her own path through childhood as a tomboy and into the fast-paced, turbulent youth revolt of the '60s. In the vanguard of a massive societal movement, constantly questioning authority and finding comfort in the fog of drugs and alcohol, she moved about from Manhattan to Mexico City to central Washington State to eventually return to her native Northern California Bay Area. Working a number of nontraditional jobs while navigating law school, she ultimately cleared the hurdles of becoming the Oakland Fire Department's first woman firefighter in 1980.
Episodes is a thoughtful, sometimes racy, self-examination of the transformation of a young woman from a refusal to conform to an eventual determination to embrace the journey to herself.
Gail Onion, Poet
“Lin Gentry’s Episodes in a Cultural Revolution is a heroine’s journey,
dynamic with never a dull moment, a memoir of recovery and discovery
published at a time when the marginalized, especially women, are still
speaking out for rights. There is a fervency on the part of the writer to pay
attention, for there may be a nascent revolution waiting inside the reader ‘to
take your power’ and go against the world. This author speaks her truth boldly, unabashedly, and unapologetically in telling her story. ‘I survived, I prevailed,
and I age contentedly in Oakland.’”
Melinda Maxwell-Smith, MT, RCST, SEP
Author of Emergence
“With free-flowing yet engaging and precise prose, Lin Gentry takes us along the river of her experience during multiple revolutions in United States culture during the wild and crazy sixties and beyond.
Episodes in a Cultural Revolution charts her personal growth as a woman who knew exactly what she wanted before kindergarten, and it looked nothing like the typical female one-size-fits-all role model of the 1940s or 1950s. Bucking and fighting as much as her childhood TV hero, Hopalong Cassidy, Lin tackles the status quo, leaping over barricades in virtually every job and every endeavor just to be herself. From feminism to lesbianism, from defying the role models of her time to finding herself, from psychedelic explorations to overcoming addiction, and from breaking glass ceilings to becoming the first female firefighter in Oakland, California, Lin’s episodes invite us to ride the rapids with her. A fast read that’s slow to leave your mind.”
Anonymous,
Retired 88-Year-Old
Art Professor
“Well, it IS a little raunchy.”
Jean Gregory,
Local Author and Performance Artist
“Those infamous 1960s of ‘drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll’ live down through the decades well into the twenty-first century. But to be young then, to be a newly-minted adult in such heady, freewheeling times, was living on the crest of a mighty wave, traveling fast into an unknown future, riding dreams of ideals, freedom, and endless possibilities. Thus, the author, Lin Gentry, found herself free of the chains holding women to the conformity of the 1950s. Free to explore new paths of expressing her irrepressible individuality, Lin went bounding down the freeway of life, scoffing at convention and society's norms and frozen expectations. Her chronicle of those young adult years in the intoxicating decade of ‘turn on, tune in, and drop out’ brings the reader into the brave new world of the young and restless of that era which she calls ‘Episodes in a Cultural Revolution.’ From her childhood birthday wishes of being a boy to her high school graduation at age 16 to being a singer in the cafés of 60s Berkeley, her book is spicy, fast-paced, shocking, and fascinating. A real page-turner and eye-popping glimpses into that radically transformative time.”
