On a November evening in 1984, Susan Rosenberg sat within the passenger seat of a U-Haul because it swerved alongside the recent Jersey Turnpike. on the wheel used to be a fellow political activist. within the again have been 740 kilos of dynamite and various weapons.

That evening I nonetheless believed with all my center that what Che Guevara had acknowledged approximately revolutionaries being prompted by way of love used to be real. I additionally believed that our govt governed the area by way of strength and that it was once essential to oppose it with strength.

Raised on ny City's top West facet, Rosenberg were politically lively considering highschool, excited by the black liberation move and protesting repressive U.S. guidelines worldwide and right here at domestic. At twenty-nine, she used to be at the FBI's so much sought after checklist. whereas unloading the U-Haul at a garage facility, Rosenberg was once arrested and sentenced to an remarkable fifty eight years for ownership of guns and explosives.

I couldn't see the lengthy distance I had traveled from my dedication to justice and equality to stockpiling weapons and dynamite. since could take years.

Rosenberg served 16 years in many of the worst maximum-security prisons within the usa prior to being pardoned by way of President Clinton as he left place of work in 2001. Now, in a narrative that's either a strong memoir and a profound indictment of the U.S. legal process, Rosenberg recounts her trip from the impassioned idealism of the Nineteen Sixties to existence as a political prisoner in her personal kingdom, subjected to dehumanizing therapy, but touched via moments of grace and team spirit. Candid and eloquent, An American Radical unearths the lady in the back of the controversy--and displays America's turbulent coming-of-age during the last part century.

Since her free up from legal in 2001, Susan Rosenberg has been a speaker, educator, and lecturer to teenagers, graduate scholars, and people concerned about the problems of ladies in felony, political prisoners, felony reform and social justice activism. She has lectured on those subject matters at Stanford legislations tuition, Yale college legislations institution, Columbia collage college of Human Rights, Rutgers collage, Brown college division of African American experiences, manhattan college division of Women's and criminal reports, college of Massachusetts division of felony reviews, collage of Michigan, Georgia kingdom collage legislations university, CUNY Graduate heart, and Washington collage tuition of legislations. additionally, she has participated in criminal reform, women's experiences and criminal meetings round the state.

Since 2004, Rosenberg has served because the director of communications at a faith-based human rights association operating to relieve poverty, starvation and sickness within the constructing international.

Rosenberg obtained an M.A. in Writing from Antioch college whereas in felony, in addition to taking graduate classes in inventive and expository writing from the college of Iowa. She is an award-winning member of PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) and a member of the PEN felony Writing Committee. For the final 3 years she has been on panels on the PEN international Voices competition with globally famous authors.

She lives in long island urban along with her family.