Flower Child Noir
A hybrid poetry memoir, a message in a bottle that speaks of childhood, traumatic histories, Jewish identities, sexual awakening, and San Francisco’s legendary counter-culture. Kaufman digs into class, race and gender with honesty and clarity while painting an intimate portrait of growing up at a time when both her family and the cultural order were unraveling.
Available now through Finishing Line Press or your local independent bookstore (personal favorite: Pegasus Books).
“These poems take us inside the bright mind of an almost grown girl beholding a world gone wild – San Francisco in the 60’s. Kaufman creates a wonderful blend of memory and insight as she captures the joys and dangers of what she beheld, witnessed, sampled, and endured.”
—Susan Griffin, essayist, poet, playwright, radical feminist philosopher
“People often think that they know what San Francisco has been: Gold Rush, earthquake, beat poets, hippies, gay rights and tech invasion. I suppose it’s not a bad set of bullet points, but Kaufman’s poems go deeper, and conjure a city that I knew growing up: the delicate connections, the neighborhood characters, the creepy undertones and the joyful vibrations.”
—Kim Shuck, 7th San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita
“Confident and whole, Kaufman’s first book doesn’t fall prey to easy nostalgia – its magnetism lies in the way it complicates the Baby Boomer coming of age story. Deeply aware of history, Kaufman embraces an unflinching truth about her experiences and the subtexts of these experiences.”
—Brian Tierney, author of Rise and Float (Milkweed Press), Winner of the 2021 Jake Adam York Prize
Poems
Vienna
After the Imperial Palace
five of us in a taxi,
tired from miles of mirrored hallways,
portraits of princes,
ceilings florid with winged cherubs…
A Father’s Work
He’d disappear early
with a black leather bag
bulging with stethoscope, bandages, morphine,
an inheritance from his father, the country doctor…
Gloria
She was the quiet one
an only child
lived with her immigrant family
in the back rooms of their deli
on West Portal Avenue…
Vienna, A Father’s Work, Gloria first appeared in multiplicity: nonfiction literary magazine
Bio
I was born and raised in 1960’s San Francisco. Abundance and alienation, melancholy and cosmic wonder – these were the feelings I had in those psychedelic days of rock n roll and America’s insane imperial war in Viet Nam. Art and politics – the realms of heaven and hell – were gravitational fields that became bedrock, that anchored me in time.
After a detour to law school, a stint in jail, and admission to the California Bar, I abandoned all that and created the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, at the time a vehicle for radical political expression, community building, and artistic exploration. It was also controversial, a lot of fun, and a cultural rocketship propelling me around the country, and to Moscow and Madrid, producing film festivals that were an audacious mix of “the return of the repressed” and cutting-edge cultural events.
Then, in a stroke of good fortune, my life partner Alan Snitow drew me into documentary work – and the possibility of re-invention mid-way through life. We became a filmmaking team making movies that address hot-button social issues, and are used by students, policy makers, and communities around the world for learning, activism, and empowerment.
All through the years I kept diaries, dream journals, and scribbled random notes. Occasionally, an essay was published or a poem shared with friends. Flower Child Noir, a hybrid-memoir collection of poems primarily focusing on my family and my youth in San Francisco, is my first book of poetry.
For more about Snitow-Kaufman Productions: www.snitow-kaufman.org