Firsthand: More than Memoir

Broader than a memoir and deeper than a social history, Firsthand is the story of one woman's life as part of the generation which created - and was created by - the revolutionary social changes of the past sixty years. When Nancy Corbett arrived in Vancouver in 1963 at 19, recently married and pregnant, the west coast was on the verge of immense social upheaval. The American Civil Rights movement was a catalyst for the growth of the student movement, while women's liberation, the anti-Vietnam/antiwar crusade and the environmental lobby were just beginning to make their presence visible. The forces of sexual liberation, racial equality, individual human rights, pacifism, anti-imperialism and environmental awareness --- and the counterforces provoked by them --- have changed the world. The 1960s were a cusp between today's growing global uniformity and the more differentiated, local human cultures of the past. The ripples from the social movements of that time have spread so far now that few places on the planet are untouched by them. Were those movements as malevolent as their critics claim, releasing a floodtide of selfish indulgence in destructive drugs, empty sex and fuzzy notions of individual rights? Were they as benevolent as its adherents believe, instigating a range of personal and cultural freedoms that were long overdue? Arriving in Sydney, Australia at the beginning of 1974, she found herself in another society on the cusp of radical transformation. While the first part of the book describes the great cultural shifts of the 1960's on the west coast of North America; the second, longer part of Firsthand takes place in Australia from 1974 onward. Corbett's personal story as a novelist, poet, educator, film extra, hopeless drunk, punter, photographer and multiple other identities over the years is interwoven throughout the book. From intensely personal accounts of the impact of depression and alcoholism on her life to analyses of the broader political and social movements - the wars, the celebrations, the liberation of women from biological and economic dependency, the growth of women's experience in the world and the raising of female voices through politics, work and art; through the music and books and films that chart the map of the age; from a deep love of the natural world and a passion for writing, this is an account of one woman's profound engagement with her times. At home variously in Vancouver, Sydney, Paris, Whale Beach, South Melbourne, the bush of the Blue Mountains, northern New South Wales and Tasmania, she juggled work and writing in a life which often seemed more like a series of lifetimes than a single, consistent one. Whether riding through the dark Vancouver streets on the lap of a young Leonard Cohen, attending AA breakfast meetings at the American Church in Paris or exploring the cryptic colouration of a tiny spider in subtropical New South Wales, everything is observed by the curious eye of a woman who seems to have lived a number of lifetimes in one. Firsthand describes the times from Corbett's viewpoint as a passionate partisan. In the end, of course, she found that the only way to change the world was to change herself, and the job is never finished. She still wants what she wanted in the 60s: a world at peace; social systems based on justice; universal respect for individual human rights; strong protection for the non-human world; rational solutions to common problems, and a rock and roll soundtrack.