‘Drag Me Out Like a Lady: An Activist’s Journey’ by Local Author, Jentri Anders  

Press release:

[Stock photo by Kym Kemp]

Drag Me Out Like a Lady: An Activist’s Journey, by Jentri Anders  

Quote [from p. 241.]:  

Once I moved off the county road, I was faced with the real rural hippie experience.  There was no electricity and there were no phones. There were scary roads, beater cars, eternal breakdowns, and, for most women, dependence on men, because so much depends on physical strength and skills obtained by virtue of being male. My fears changed from urban to rural — bats, ticks, snakes, fires, weather, medical emergencies, landslides. The easy part was that I knew I was doing something meaningful and doing it in the midst of a community of people also wanting to live sane, meaningful, non-exploitive lives. On the plus side, everything was very clear and very simple. All you have to do is stay alive and protect your child. There were no big abstractions to deal with, no “movement,” no endless arguments over tactics and policy, no constant jockeying for position in a corporate or academic hierarchy skewed against me, no defending myself from attacks from left and right. . .. In SoHum, what there was to defend myself from or embrace was plain and simple — rain, mud, friends, gardens, music, illness, mosquitoes, breathtaking natural beauty, spiritual evolution. On the last one, it was quiet in the country, encouraging a meditative outlook. . . I could step out my door or open a window and hear rain and frogs and nothing else. I was more than ready for it.

History is not always big. Sometimes it is small. Local author, Jentri Anders, reflects this concept in her new book, Drag Me Out Like a Lady: An Activist’s Journey. In this autobiography, Anders describes her unusual life in an unusual time from the perspective of her experiences as both a political activist and an anthropologist studying back-to-the-land hippies in southern Humboldt County, California.  Starting with with her Dixiecrat family in the deep South, she moves through the women’s rebellion she led at a Bible college in Georgia, her arrest in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and her subsequent participation in the anti-war and People’s Park movements there in the 1960s, to dropping out and becoming a country hippie. She was blacklisted for federal employment by the FBI, politically and sexually harassed out of UC Berkeley, and arrested twice more in Humboldt County as one of the “Whitethorn 9,” protesting irresponsible logging, and as a member of the Citizens Observation Group, protecting the civil rights of local residents. Though she was never an official leader, Anders’ viewpoint as a dedicated and observant participant provides what historian Howard Zinn would call a “people’s history” of the movements and the time period.  

 Writing as both an activist and a scholar, Anders provides historical context to her memories through the use of plentiful literary references, correspondence and material from her personal files. Her latest book is not only a good read for the general public, but a valuable historical reference for historians of the political movements of the 60s, the counterculture, Humboldt County, and the historical period of the 50s, 60s and 70s in America. Although the aim is to describe the events of her life in a historical context, some analysis is included on the subjects of racism, religion and the status of women, based on both her personal experiences and her observations as a social scientist. Her own analysis, however, takes a back seat to her experience as she discusses her relationship to the major influences in her life— anthropology, activism, gender relations, southern culture, racism and religion.  

 The longest chapter focusses on her life as a back-to-the-land hippie, starting in 1971 in the Briceland area of Humboldt County. Off the grid for 15 years, she raised 2 children, helped to found more than one local organization and taught at schools both mainstream and alternative, taking notes all the while. This period of her life is covered as a less academic, more journalistic continuation of her earlier book about the southern Humboldt countercultural community, Beyond Counterculture: the Community of Mateel. While generalized interest in Humbold County increasingly focusses on the cannabis industry, Anders’ attention remains on the cultural uniqueness of the county and her personal relationship to it.  Although Drag Me Out Like a Lady: An Activist’s Journey is currently available only in ebook form, the chapter on southern Humbold County is available as an excerpt in booklet form, entitled Ages and Ages Hence, for $20 directly from the author who may be contacted via email.  

About the author:  

Anthropologist Jentri Anders, PhD, is former adjunct faculty at both College of the Redwoods and  CalPoly Humboldt. She holds a Master’s degree in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate from Washington State University, Pullman. As a reporter for several northern California newspapers, including the now-defunct Redwood Record and the Garberville Independent, she has written hundreds of articles and features on northern California issues. In 1990, she was a participant in the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Berkeley in the Sixties, produced and directed by Mark Kitchell. She is currently retired and resides in Redway.

Drag Me Out Like a Lady: An Activist’s Journey, by Jentri Anders
Gegensatz Press, 2022  

Now available as an ebook from Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details? id=QN2IEAAAQBAJ . Price: $3.99. Pages: 470. Chapters: 16. ISBN 978-1-62130-831-7  

Contact: Jentri Anders. j[email protected] or 707-599-3334, please leave a message.