Elsie Levy was born in the Jewish East End of London, came to Sydney with her family when she was 14, and joined the Communist Party of Australia when she was a young woman. In this book, her son explores her disaporic Jewish identity, both English and Australian, and in the process journeys into Jewish cultural histories. We meet important cultural figures such as Leonard Woolf, Freud, Schnitzler, Veza Canetti and Ida Rubinstein. This journey leads also to English anti-Semitism, including, shockingly, Bloomsbury. In turning to Communism and marrying out, Elsie Levy became one of history's undutiful daughters.

John Docker grew up in Bondi, the son of Communist parents, his mother Jewish from the East End of London and his father of Irish descent. His Bondi is not the site of sunny mindlessness but rather a place of intense immigrant and political life. This book traces his often comic experiences at Bondi Wellington Primary School and Randwick Boys High School. At the University of Sydney from 1963, he became a teenage Leavisite and participated in the anarchistic New Left. With Ann Curthoys he travelled on the Hippie Trail through Asia to London, which became for both the scene of what Gorky referred to as the University of Life.

Ted Docker was an Australian of Irish descent who as a young man wanted to change the world, joining first the Industrial Workers of the World and then helping form the Communist Party of Australia. He was steadfastly loyal to the Soviet Union and by historical record a stern hard-liner. This is not the whole story.

This is for set of 3 volumes

"A memoir about growing up Jewish in Shanghai prior to, during and post WW2"--Provided by publisher.

The Cold War was a turbulent time to grow up in. Family ties were tested, friendships were torn apart and new beliefs forged out of the ruins of old loyalties. In this book, through twelve evocative stories of childhood and early adulthood in Australia during the Cold War years, writers from vastly different backgrounds explore how global political events affected the intimate space of home, family life and friendships. Some writers were barely in their teens when they felt the first touches of their parents’ political lives, both on the Left and the Right. Others grew up in households well attuned to activism across the spectrum, including anti-communism, workers’ rights, anti-Vietnam War, anti-apartheid and women’s rights. Sifting through the key political and social developments in Australia from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, including the referendum to ban the Communist Party of Australia, the rise of ‘the Movement’ and the Labor split, and post-war migration, this book is a powerful and poignant telling of the ways in which the political is personal.

Bread and Roses is an Australian first, a collection of stories from academics who identify as coming from working-class backgrounds. At once inspiring and challenging, the collection demonstrates how individual narratives are both personal and structural, in that they illustrate the ways in which social forces shape individual lives. Central themes in the book are generational changes in university education provision in Australia, the complexities of coming from a working class background and being female, or coming from a working class background and being female and a recent migrant, and the particular challenges facing students and staff from rural and regional areas. An essential read for anyone interested in widening participation programs in higher education, including administrators, academics, past and present students, Bread and Roses is both a map for those who want to undertake a similar journey and a community for those who want to join.