In a generous spirit
Subtitle: a first-person biography of Myra Page
By: Christina Looper Baker ; foreword by Alice Kessler-Harris ; afterword by Mary Frederickson.
Contributors: Page, Myra, 1897-
Series: Women in American history
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 273
Subjects: Page, Myra, 1897-; Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.; Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Women communists -- United States -- Biography.
Description: Dorothy Markey's family and culture prepared her to be a proper southern lady. Yet Markey broke free of her cultural bonds and became, instead, a feminist, a communist, and, under the pen name Myra Page, a radical journalist and novelist. Her activism on behalf of social justice, racial equality, and women's rights spanned the 1920s through her death in 1993.

Page's work carried her far from her Virginia home to Moscow, Mexico, the rural South, and New York. As a journalist she wrote for the Daily Worker, the New Masses, Working Woman, and Southern Worker. Her novels captured workers' struggles in an authentic voice: The Gathering Storm, Daughter of the Hills, and Moscow Yankee.

With consummate skill, Christina Baker weaves together historical research, her own and others' conversations with Page, and Page's letters and other writings. The resulting narrative is a vivid recreation of the life of an uncommon woman and her more than seventy years of striving for the things she believed in.
Notes: Includes text from interviews with and narrative biography of the subject.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [212]-261) and index.
Table of contents: title: Rebel roots; title: Thwarted sisters; title: Southern discomfort; title: Choosing freedom; title: Breaking away; title: Union novice; title: Finding love; title: Carolina mill hands; title: Gathering strength; title: Radical ferment; title: Writing left; title: New world; title: Soviet Yankees; title: Finding shelter; title: Another South; title: Active women; title: Home fronts; title: Red scare; title: New left; title: Standing strong.