Vida. Vida. I think of her name at least once a month. She’s the eponymous protagonist of Marge Piercy’s brilliant 1979 novel, Vida, and a character who affects me like few others. Vida is a fugitive evading arrest for anti-Vietnam War bombings during the 1960s as part of a Weatherman-type group called the Little Red Wagon.
Many people consider Vida to be one of the most important American political novels. It may well be, but when I sat down to write this piece I realised that I don’t care about Vida’s politics. (I have an unhappy feeling that Piercy, best known for her feminist sci-fi classic Woman on the Edge of Time, would disapprove, mightily, and wouldn’t want to be friends with me.)
