Quelltext der Seite Benutzer:Woodcut-like/Sally Belfrage

{{Importartikel}}
[[:en:Sally Belfrage]]

'''Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage''' (* [[4. Oktober]] [[1936]] in [[Hollywood]]; † [[14. März]] [[1994]] im [[Middlesex Hospital]] in [[London]]) war eine in den [[Vereinigte Staaten|Vereinigten Staaten]] geborene [[Vereinigtes Königreich|britische]] Schriftstellerin und Journalistin.<ref name="independent.co.uk">{{cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sally-belfrage-1429457.html|title=Obituary: Sally Belfrage|date=16 March 1994|website=[[The Independent]]|accessdate=21 June 2019}}{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/15/obituaries/sally-belfrage-dies-writer-specializing-in-memoirs-was-57.html|title=Sally Belfrage Dies; Writer Specializing In Memoirs Was 57|first=Eric|last=Pace|date=1994-03-15|publisher=|accessdate=22 June 2019|via=NYTimes.com}}</ref>
==Leben==
Ihr schriftstellerisches Werk waren Sachbücher zu den Themen: Nordirlandkonflikt, das Leben in einem indischen Ashram und über die [[Bürgerrechtsbewegung]] in Mississippi 1964<ref>Wesley C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America, [https://books.google.de/books?id=bim4Cjy6LOIC&pg=PA392&dq=Sally+Belfrage+reports+from+1964&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibzITvhtbmAhX0ThUIHcGeBd8Q6AEIVzAF#v=onepage&q=Sally%20Belfrage%20reports%20from%201964&f=false S. 392]</ref> und sowie Recherchen zum Leben ihres Vaters. 

Ihre Eltern waren [[Molly Castle]] <ref group="A">Molly Castle (* 1903 in Wallasey, Cheshire, England as Mary Beatrice Pigott; † 28. April 1987 in South Road, [[Paget Parish]], Bermuda Island, Bermuda)
Born 	1903 in Wallasey, Cheshire, England, UK
Died 	April 28, 1987 in South Road, Paget, Bermuda Island, Bermuda
Birth Name	Mary Beatrice Pigott
Nickname	Molly
Mini Bio 

Molly Castle was born in 1903 in Wallasey, Cheshire, England as Mary Beatrice Pigott. 
She was a writer, known for Living in Hollywood (1939). She was married to William Tucker, Cedric Belfrage and Charles Castle. 
She died on April 28, 1987 in South Road, Paget, Bermuda Island, Bermuda.
Spouse (3)
William Tucker 	(19 May 1956 - 28 April 1987) ( her death)
Cedric Belfrage 	(January 1936 - 1953) ( divorced) ( 2 children)
Charles Castle 	(12 July 1926 - 192?) ( divorced)

Mother of Sally Belfrage and 'Nicholas Belfrage'. 
Mother-in-law (1965-1976) of Bernard Pomerance. 
Sister-in-law (1936-1953) of Bruce Belfrage, aunt of Julian Belfrage.
Molly Castle raised Sally and her younger brother Nicky, building a career for herself at [[McCall’s]], and then, when she refused to testify against Cedric, and the F.B.I. got her fired, starting over again as a ghostwriter for the medical press. It was this “wonky” apolitical lady writer who picked up the pieces, but whose teary outbursts over her husband's abandonment, and her apparent preference for Nicky, Sally never forgave. 
Curbing her own anger when her father turned his back on her after the abortion, Belfrage wondered whether he would “go hide in the bathroom, the way he used to when Mummy sounded off.” 
She had to live with him then (Mummy having been deported first), and so she wants to become more like him, less like her mother, “and ignore the bad stuff. Maybe I have the gene someplace,” she adds wistfully, which of course she does, “if I



</ref> und [[Cedric Belfrage]]<ref group="A">Cedric Henning Belfrage (*8. November 1904; † 21. Juni 1990) war ein britischer Filmkritiker, Journalist, Schriftsteller und politischer Aktivist. Man erinnert sich am besten an ihn als Mitbegründer der links-radikalen US-Wochenzeitung ''The National Guardian''. Später wurde Belfrage als sowjetischer Agent im [[VENONA-Projekt]] bezeichnet, obwohl es den Anschein hat, dass er als Doppelagent für die [[British Security Coordination]] gearbeitet hatte. Molly Castle (m. 1936; div. 1953) Zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatte Jacob Golos Zweifel an Belfrage. Seine Assistentin, Elizabeth Bentley, sagte später dem FBI: "Belfrage war ein äußerst merkwürdiger und ziemlich schwierig zu behandelnder Charakter. Obwohl er sich leidenschaftlich für die Sache einsetzte, betrachtete er sich immer noch als patriotischen Briten und gab uns daher keine Informationen, die dies zeigten Englands Fehler aufzuspüren oder sie zum Gespött zu machen. Guide to the Sally Belfrage Papers, 1903-1994, (Bulk 1960-1990) [https://web.archive.org/web/20060905085349/http://dlib.nyu.edu:8083/tamwagead/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=%2Fbelfrage_s.xml&style=%2Fsaxon01t2002.xsl&part=body 2006-09-05]
<!--
Sally was the daughter of Cedric Belfrage and Molly Castle, both well-known journalists, who had divorced a long time ... Cedric had spent some years in America, and during the McCarthy period had edited a radical left-wing newspaper 
https://books.google.de/books?id=QIJjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA119&dq=Sally+Belfrage+for+newspaper&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo6tj0j9bmAhU2QEEAHbIvC1kQ6AEIRDAD#v=onepage&q=Sally%20Belfrage%20for%20newspaper&f=false

Seite 393
1945, with Justice Birket presiding, in the libel case of the editor of the Nineteenth Century magazine, [[Frederick A. Voigt]], as plaintiff, against Cedric Belfrage, journalist, the New Chronicle, as well as the Daily News in London, as defendants.''The Ukrainian Quarterly'' 1945-->
</ref>
1941 zog sie mit ihrem Vater von Hollywood nach New York City, wo Sally an der [[Bronx High School of Science]] und dem [[Hunter College]] studierte. 
1953 wurde ihr Vater vor den Ausschuss geladen und von ihrer Mutter geschieden.
1955 wurde ihr Vater als Kommunist nach London deportiert.<ref>Anne Commire
Gale, Women in World History, 08.10.1999 - 936 S., [https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=1955+%22Sally+Mary+Caroline+Belfrage%22&dq=1955+%22Sally+Mary+Caroline+Belfrage%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQirmAotTmAhVQ_KQKHXWPDdYQ6AEIPzAC S. 366]</ref>
Von 1954 bis 1957 studierte sie an der [[London School of Economics]].
Den Winter 1957, 1958 Abschluss des Studiums arbeitete sie für den [[Foreign Languages Publishing House (Soviet Union)]] in Moskau.
<!--Sally Belfrage's first book, A Room in Moscow, recounts her experiences living as a Muscovite during the winter of 1957-58, and as an employee of the Foreign Languages Publishing House. Belfrage commented that "the book-->
Belfrage wurde eine soziale Aktivistin und Weltreisende.
1964 verbrachte sie den Sommer in [[Greenwood (Mississippi)]], einer der wenigen großen Städte im Nordwesten des [[Mississippi River Delta]]s. Verantwortlich für diesen Teil des Staates für [[Council of Federated Organizations]] war [[Stokely Carmichael]], der später das Oberhaupt der [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] wurde und sie in Richtung [[Black Power]] führte.
<!--

Belfrage, Sally (1936-1994)
American journalist and memoirist whose first book, A Room in Moscow, brought her instant fame.
Born Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage in Hollywood, California, on October 4, 1936; died in London on March 14, 1994;
daughter of Cedric Belfrage and Molly Castle, studied in New York City and the London School of Economic; married Berard Poerance, in 1965; childreen: Eve and Moly.
Selected writings: 
A Room in Moscow (London: André Deutsch, 1958); 
Living With War: A Belfast Year (NY: Viking Press, 1987);
Freedom Summer (with a Foreword by Robert P. Moses, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia 1990);
Un-American Activities: A Memoir of the Fifties (NY; Harpercollins, 1994)
Sally Belfrage was born in Hollywood, California, on March 14, 1936, to British parents who were distinctly un-American in their attitudes.
Her father Cedric was born into a well-to- do physician's family; sent to Cambridge University, he arrived there along with his manservant and a "meager" allowance of two pounds a week. 
By the time Sally was born, both of her parents had established themselves as successful journalists. Cedric Belfrage's transformation into an intellectual iconoclast was well underway, and by the 1940s he was proudly calling himself an "independent radical." In 1948, he founded a spirited left-wing journal, The National Guardian.
Sally's mother Molly Castle, who was less interested in politics, was known to have more than her quota of British eccentricities. 
Largely because of her father's leftist politics, Sally felt herself an outsider while growing up in California and New York City, where she attended the Bronx High School of Science and Hjnter Colege-
Above all else, she wanted to be accepted as an "All American Gils," a difficult tast given her familiy's politics. Her Jewish fiance's mother was fiercely determined to protect her son from the dire threat of "a shiksa Red spy's daughter," and broke up his relationship with Belfrage. The most traumatic event of these years for Belfrage was her father's 1955 departure from the United States after * Elizabeth Bentley accused him of having been involved in Communist espionage. Belfrage went to England with her father and enrolled at the London School of Economics. 
Encouraged by her father and intrigued in her own right, she traveled to Moscow in 1957 as a member of the United States delegation to the World Youth Festival.
Defying a Wasington ban on travel to the People's Republic of China, Belfrage also traveled there to see for herself what the McCarthyites believed she should not examine firsthand.
On her return from Peking to Moscow, she decided to remain in Moscow for five months and took a job at the Foreign Languages Publishing House. There, she rented a room of her own — a unique achievement for a foreigner, let alone a Soviet citizen - and met the British spy Donald Maclean.
The book Belfrage wrote about her experiences in the Soviet Union, A Room in Moscow, became a worldwide bestseller. The reviewer for the respected Manchester Guardian praised it as "a unique, outrageous, lively and intelligent account of a winter in Moscow spent among a group of Muscovite bohemians." 
The American celebrity machine, then still in its infancy, took a fancy to the spunky young woman barely out of her teens.
Mike Wallace interviewed her for network television, *Dorothy Parker gave a party in her honor, and *Eleanor Roosevelt graciously chatted with her. Theodore White gave her book his blessing, calling it "a gem of perceptive reporting.
Following Eleanor Roosevelt's suggestion that she go to the Middle East to gather material for another book, Belfrage spent a year in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria. 
Her notebooks filled up, and she contracted a sham marriage with Sari Nashashibi, the son of a distinguished Palestinian family, in order to help him acquire American citizenship. 
But her time spent in the region never led to a book, as Belfrage decided she was too emotionally conflicted to achieve any repor- torial distance on the Middle East's countless conflicts. 
After her return to the United States, the FBI decided that she was a chip off the Belfrage block. Regarding her as a potential "security risk," the agency began to assemble a file on Belfrage that over two decades grew to several hundreds of pages. 
The rise of the civil-rights movement in the American South contained the elements of extreme conflict and basic human questions that attracted Belfrage as both a reporter and private citizen. She spent the summer of 1963 in Mississippi as a volunteer with Stokely Carmichael's voter registration campaign. Despite the considerable risks involved, she probed every aspect of the racism that had distorted the lives of both blacks and whites in the Deep South since the end of the Civil War. The result of her stay was the book Freedom Summer, which received high critical praise upon publication. 
Writing in the New York Review of Books, noted Southern writer Walker Percy described the work as "a low-keyed and all the more effective treatment of the gritty routine of running a Freedom library, of the Negroes, the daily procession of small harassments, the obscene phone calls, the cars that try to run you down in the street, and finally the registration drive and a week-end in the Greenwood jail." The book has become a classic and was reprinted in 1990.
Belfrage married writer Bernard Pomerance in 1965 and became mother to a son and a daughter. The family moved to London, Pomerance achieved success with his play The Elephant Man, but the marriage broke down. 
She began the 1980s immersing herself in the ways of the followers of Guru Bhagwan Shree Ra- jneesh, joining two of two of her friends at his ashram in Poona, India. 
The insightful and often extremely humorous book that resulted was the 1981 volume Flowers of Emptiness. 
The review in Newsweek described the book as "an utterly absorbing odyssey." 
Much more serious was her investigation of the violence in Northern Ireland. 
Belfrage spent many months interviewing participants in the sectarian hatreds of the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Belfast; eventually, she reached the sad conclusion that it would prove difficult to end the conflict because many individuals and groups had vested interests in keeping intact the existing system of injustice and violence.
Belfrage had friends and admirers all over the world and was known for her courage, sense of humor, and lack of snobbery. An active participant in the women's movement in the United Kingdom, she was one of a group of close friends who supported "Jill Tweedie during her final illness. Days after Tweedie's death in December 1993, Belfrage learned that she had terminal cancer.
By this time, she had completed the manuscript of her last book, the autobiographical Un-American Activities: A Memoir of the Fifties. Sally Belfrage spent the last weeks of her life going over the galley proofs of what Nora Sayre called her "fascinating and irresistible" memoir of life in the conformist years of the Cold War and Senator Joseph McCarthy. 
The reviews of Un-American Activities were enthusiastic, with Victor Navasky leading the pack: "Sally Belfrage's beautiful memoir is heartrending, hilarious, and as roller-coasterisch as the decade she has forever captured."
It was a review Belfrage did not live to see.
She died in London on March 14, 1994.
Many years before, her friend Orson Wells affectionately captured ther essence, calling Belfrage "a good old-fashioned international nuisance."

SOURCES:
Fowler, Gelnn, Cedric Belfrage, 85, Target of Communist Inquiry." in The New York Times Biographical Service, June 1990, p. 596.
Pace Eric. "Sally Belfrage Dies; Writer Specilizing in Memoirs Was 57," in The New York Times Biographical Service, March 1994, p. 396
"Sally Belfrage" in The Times [London], March 19, 1994, p. 21
John Haag, Associate Professor University of Georgia, Atlanta Georgia.

[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22London+School+of+Economics.%22+%22Her+notebooks%22&dq=%22London+School+of+Economics.%22+%22Her+notebooks%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJi_uUptbmAhXPblAKHYesBS4Q6AEIPDAC]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22a+unique,+outrageous,+lively+and+intelligent+account+of%22&dq=%22a+unique,+outrageous,+lively+and+intelligent+account+of%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS3MCrqdbmAhUDDOwKHYMlA1YQ6AEIKDAA]

[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22On+her+return+from+Peking+to+Moscow,+she+decided+to%22&dq=%22On+her+return+from+Peking+to+Moscow,+she+decided+to%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAq_POp9bmAhWDjKQKHWixBSQQ6AEIKDAA]
https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22too+emotionally+conflicted+to+achieve+any+repor-+torial%22&dq=%22too+emotionally+conflicted+to+achieve+any+repor-+torial%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiR4tnvn9bmAhXOX8AKHXS-CBAQ6AEIKjAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22running+a+Freedom+library,+of+the+Negroes,+the+daily+procession+of%22&dq=%22running+a+Freedom+library,+of+the+Negroes,+the+daily+procession+of%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHxLDxrdbmAhVFLFAKHTcmAzUQ6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22the+obscene+phone+calls,+the+cars+that+try+to+run+you+down%22&dq=%22the+obscene+phone+calls,+the+cars+that+try+to+run+you+down%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc57mBsNbmAhUO2qQKHebEBFQQ6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Elephant+Man,+but+the+marriage+broke+down.+She+began+the%22&dq=%22Elephant+Man,+but+the+marriage+broke+down.+She+began+the%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJmIDbsdbmAhXB2qQKHT6GDZ4Q6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Much+more+serious+was+her+investigation+of+the%22&dq=%22Much+more+serious+was+her+investigation+of+the%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZrIvmtNbmAhWxsKQKHbkWDuYQ6AEIKDAA]

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Many of the transformations in the movement can be traced to the Freedom Summer of 1964, a voting rights drive in Mississippi orchestrated by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), generally the combined
COFO focused on voter registration and education. Led by SNCC activist Bob Moses, COFO launched the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.

CHAPTER 3 Sally Belfrage Belfrage spent the summer in Greenwood, one of the few large towns in the northwest portion of the Mississippi Delta. In charge of that part of the state for COFO was Stokely Carmichael who would subsequently become the head of SNCC and lead it in the direction of Black Power. So Belfrage's account is significant as a portrait, by a sympathetic white,
https://books.google.de/books?id=JHoOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22In+charge+of+that+part+of+the+state+for+COFO+was+Stokely+Carmichael+who+would%22&dq=%22In+charge+of+that+part+of+the+state+for+COFO+was+Stokely+Carmichael+who+would%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-94Hek9bmAhUIi1wKHdHZA8UQ6AEIKDAA

-->
1965 heiratete sie [[Bernard Pomerance]], der 1977 das Theaterstück, [[The Elephant Man]] schrieb.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://apnews.com/2ef4a4875d721da6d270cb91519c6bc1|title=Sally Belfrage, American-born Journalist, Dies at 57|website=AP NEWS|accessdate=22 June 2019}}</ref> Sie hatten zwei Kinder: Eve Pomerance, eine Casting-Regisseurin in Hollywood, und Moby Pomerance, eine Dramatikerin.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.castingbyeve.com/resume|title=Resume - eve pomerance casting|website=evepomerancecasting|accessdate=22 June 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://weplaydifferent.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/an-interview-with-moby-pomerance/|title=An Interview with Moby Pomerance|date=19 July 2010|publisher=|accessdate=22 June 2019}}</ref> 

1968 unterzeichnete Belfrage zusammen mit 447 anderen amerikanischen Schriftstellern und Herausgebern einen Aufruf zum Widerstand gegen die Kriegssteuer, der 1968 im [[Ramparts]]<ref>Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, [https://nwtrcc.org/history/writers-and-editors-names.php], [[Ramparts]], Noah's Ark, 1968, [https://books.google.de/books?id=HmgYAQAAIAAJ&q=Sally+Mary+Caroline+Belfrage+war+tax&dq=Sally+Mary+Caroline+Belfrage+war+tax&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQktytndTmAhVmwcQBHXy0DSQQ6AEIKzAA]</ref>und am 30. Januar 1969 in der ''[[New York Post]]'' veröffentlicht wurde.

1987 hatte sie ein [[Guggenheim-Stipendium]] und studierte den [[Nordirlandkonflikt]].<ref>John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Reports of the President and of the Treasurer, 1987, [https://books.google.de/books?id=3JrWAAAAMAAJ&q=Sally+Belfrage+%22+London+School+of+Economics%22&dq=Sally+Belfrage+%22+London+School+of+Economics%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsmMvpl9bmAhVHsaQKHZZbATYQ6AEIbDAI S. 8]</ref> 
Sally Belfrage lebte den größten Teil ihres Lebens in London, wo sie 1994 im Alter von 57 Jahren im Middlesex Hospital an [[Bronchialkarzinom|Lungenkrebs]] starb. 
==Werdegang==
Sally Belfrage wurde am 14. März 1936 in Hollywood, Kalifornien, als Tochter britischer Eltern geboren, die in ihrer Einstellung eindeutig unamerikanisch waren.
Ihr Vater Cedric wurde in eine wohlhabende Arztfamilie hineingeboren. Er wurde an die [[Universität Cambridge]] geschickt und kam dort zusammen mit seinem Diener und einer "mageren" Zulage von zwei [[Britisches Pfund|Pfund]] pro Woche an.
Als Sally geboren wurde, hatten sich beide Elternteile als erfolgreiche Journalisten etabliert. Cedric Belfrage hat sich in den 1940er Jahren stolz als "unabhängiger Radikaler" bezeichnet. 1948 gründete er eine temperamentvolle linke Zeitschrift, The National Guardian.
Von Sallys Mutter Molly Castle, die sich weniger für Politik interessierte, war bekannt, dass sie über mehr als ihre Quote an britischen Exzentrizitäten verfügte.
Vor allem wegen der linken Politik ihres Vaters fühlte sich Sally als Außenseiterin, als sie in Kalifornien und New York City aufwuchs, wo sie die [[Bronx High School of Science]] und [[Hunter College]] besuchte.
Vor allem wollte sie als "All American Gils" anerkannt werden, ein schwieriger Geschmack angesichts der Politik ihrer Familie. Die Mutter ihres jüdischen Verlobten war fest entschlossen, ihren Sohn vor der schrecklichen Bedrohung durch die "[[Schickse]] Tochter eines Shiksa Red Spy" zu schützen, und brach seine Beziehung zu Belfrage ab. 1955 war die Deportation ihres Vaters nach London ein traumatisches Ereignis, nachdem [[Elizabeth Bentley]] ihn beschuldigte, in kommunistische Spionage verwickelt gewesen zu sein. Belfrage ging mit ihrem Vater nach England und schrieb sich an der [[London School of Economics]] ein.

Am am 13. Mai 1955 wurde Cedric verhaftet blieb 3 Monate im West Street Jail und wurde im August nach London deportiert, was Sally traumatisch erlebte. Jo Martin machte ein medizinisches Praktikum. Sally verschwendet Zeit bei Hunter, am Wochenende in West Point. Gene Dan ist im Sommer militärisch beschäftigt, Sally geht nach London, um Mary & Nicky zu besuchen. Mary arbeitet in britischen Frauenmagazinen. Cedric Deportation geht durch; er und Jo kommen im August in London an. Sally beschließt, doch nicht nach New York zurückzukehren. (Informiert Hunter niemals: unehrenhafte Entlassung.) Cedric, Jo & Sally finden eine Wohnung in 16 Talbot Sq. Cedric reist als "Editor-in-Exile" von Guardian durch Europa. Jo Martin studiert für neue medizinische Untersuchungen. Sally bekommt einen Job bei John Calder Publishers als "Junior" für 4-Pfund-10 pro Woche.

1955 : Cedric arrested May 13: 3 months in West Street Jail, no bail. Jo doing medical internship. Sally wasting time at Hunter, weekends at WP. Gene Dan being militarily engaged for summer, Sally goes to London to visit Mary & Nicky . Mary working in British women's mags. Cedric's deportation goes through; he and Jo arrive in London August. Sally decides not to go back to NY after all. (Never informs Hunter: dishonorable discharge.) Cedric, Jo & Sally find flat at 16 Talbot Sq. Cedric as "Editor-in-exile" of Guardian travels round Europe. J studies for new set of medical exams. Sally gets job with John Calder Publishers as "junior" for 4-pounds-10 a week.


Von ihrem Vater ermutigt und von sich aus fasziniert, reiste sie 1957 als Mitglied der US-amerikanischen Delegation zu den [[Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten]] nach Moskau.<ref>United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, Communist Problems in Latin America: A Report, [https://books.google.de/books?id=ZU9wIOUzzv0C&pg=RA5-PA50&dq=wrote+for+%22Sally+Mary+Caroline+Belfrage%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikoM3oyNbmAhWOzaQKHYV1BnEQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=wrote%20for%20%22Sally%20Mary%20Caroline%20Belfrage%22&f=false S. 50]</ref>
Gegen ein Wasington-Reiseverbot in die Volksrepublik [[China]] reiste Belfrage auch dorthin, um sich selbst ein Bild davon zu machen, was die McCarthy-Anhänger ihrer Meinung nach nicht aus erster Hand untersuchen sollten.
Nach ihrer Rückkehr von Peking nach Moskau beschloss sie, fünf Monate in Moskau zu bleiben, und nahm eine Stelle beim Verlag für Fremdsprachen an. Dort mietete sie ein eigenes Zimmer - eine einzigartige Leistung für einen Ausländer, geschweige denn für einen Sowjetbürger - und traf den britischen Spion [[Donald Maclean]] und erschien in einem Film Russian movie, "Memories of the Heart."
Das Buch Belfrage über ihre Erfahrungen in der Sowjetunion, ''A Room in Moscow'', wurde ein weltweiter Bestseller. Der Rezensent des ''[[Manchester Guardian]]'' lobte es als "eine einzigartige, empörende, lebhafte und intelligente Darstellung eines Winters in Moskau, der unter einer Gruppe muskovitischer Bohemiens verbracht wurde".]<ref>Sally Belfrage, ''[[Der Spiegel]]'', 18. Januar 1961, [https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-43159509.html]</ref>
Mit [[Benjamin Sonnenberg]] dem Gründer der Zeitschrift Grand Street reiste sie,<ref>snaccooperative.org, [https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6jm3dtv]</ref>
Am 9. Juni 1968 erschien ein Artikel von ihr im ''[[The Spectator (Zeitschrift)]]''<ref>,Assassination in Context By SALLY BELFRAGE,  [https://books.google.de/books?id=IOohAQAAMAAJ&q=Sally+Belfrage+The+Spectator+Jordania&dq=Sally+Belfrage+The+Spectator+Jordania&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF3e-F29bmAhXBJlAKHW0XBS0Q6AEIKDAA]</ref>
Am 30. Juni 1984 erschien ein Artikel von ihr in ''[[The Nation]]''<ref>, [https://books.google.de/books?id=nloaAAAAYAAJ&q=The+Nation+%22Sally+Belfrage%22&dq=The+Nation+%22Sally+Belfrage%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMmY723NbmAhUH5aQKHbP4A5g4FBDoAQg8MAI]</ref>
Die amerikanische Promi-Maschine, die damals noch in den Kinderschuhen steckte, fand Gefallen an der jungen Frau, die noch keine Teenager war.
* [[Mike Wallace]] interviewte sie für das Netzwerkfernsehen, 
* [[Dorothy Parker]] gab ihr zu Ehren eine Party und 
* [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] plauderte freundlich mit ihr. [[Theodore H. White]] gab ihrem Buch seinen Segen und nannte es "ein Juwel wahrnehmender Berichterstattung".
Auf den Vorschlag von Eleanor Roosevelt, in den Nahen Osten zu reisen, um Material für ein weiteres Buch zu sammeln, verbrachte Belfrage ein Jahr in [[Ägypten]], [[Israel]], [[Jordanien]] und [[Syrien]].
Ihre Notizbücher füllten sich und sie schloss eine Scheinheirat mit Sari Nashashibi, dem Sohn einer angesehenen palästinensischen Familie, ab, um ihm zu helfen, die amerikanische Staatsbürgerschaft zu erlangen.
Ihre Zeit in der Region führte jedoch nie zu einem Buch, da Belfrage feststellte, dass sie zu emotional in Konflikt geraten war, um eine Berichterstattung über die unzähligen Konflikte im Nahen Osten zu erhalten.
Nach ihrer Rückkehr in die Vereinigten Staaten entschied das [[FBI]], dass sie ein Sproß vom Belfrage-Stamm war. Die [[CIA]]  betrachtete sie als potenzielles "Sicherheitsrisiko" und begann, eine Akte über Belfrage zusammenzustellen, die über zwei Jahrzehnte mehrere Hundert Seiten umfasste.
Der Aufstieg der [[Bürgerrechtsbewegung]] im amerikanischen Süden beinhaltete die Elemente extremer Konflikte und grundlegender menschlicher Fragen, die Belfrage sowohl als Reporterin als auch persönlich anzog. Sie verbrachte den Sommer 1963 als Freiwillige bei [[Stokely Carmichael]]s Wahlregistrierungskampagne in [[Mississippi]]. Trotz der erheblichen Risiken untersuchte sie jeden Aspekt des Rassismus, der das Leben von Schwarzen und Weißen im tiefen Süden seit dem Ende des Bürgerkriegs verzerrt hatte. Das Ergebnis ihres Aufenthalts war das Buch Freedom Summer, das bei der Veröffentlichung ein hohes kritisches Lob erhielt.
In der New York Review of Books beschrieb der Schriftsteller [[Walker Percy]] aus dem Süden die Arbeit als "eine zurückhaltende und umso effektivere Behandlung der schwierigen Routine, eine Freiheitsbibliothek zu betreiben, der Neger, der täglichen Prozession kleiner Belästigungen." die obszönen Anrufe, die Autos, die versuchen, Sie auf die Straße zu bringen, und schließlich die Registrierungsfahrt und ein Wochenende im Greenwood-Gefängnis. " Das Buch ist zu einem Klassiker geworden und wurde 1990 neu aufgelegt.<ref>wisconsinhistory.org, [http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15932coll2/id/37769]</ref>
Belfrage heiratete im November 1965 den Schriftsteller Bernard Pomerance und wurde Mutter eines Sohnes und einer Tochter. 
Die Familie zog nach London, Pomerance erzielte mit seinem Stück ''The Elephant Man'' Erfolge, die Ehe wurde 1976 oder 1983 geschieden.<ref>Bernard Pomerance, [https://books.google.de/books?id=FspZDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT334&lpg=PT334&dq=Pomerance+Sally+Belfrage+divorces&source=bl&ots=DK2GTy8gOo&sig=ACfU3U3iXGr9kOlhxbKLb5LbTMz3LW2Ofw&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwja2NXSxNbmAhUBLFAKHYW7DyoQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Pomerance%20Sally%20Belfrage%20divorces&f=false]</ref>
Sie begann in den 1980er Jahren, sich mit den Anhängern von Guru [[Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh]] vertraut zu machen, und gesellte sich zu zwei ihrer Freunde in seinem Ashram in [[Poona]], Indien.
Das aufschlussreiche und oft äußerst humorvolle Buch, das herauskam, war der 1981 erschienene Band ''Flowers of Emptiness''.
Die Rezension in [[Newsweek]] beschrieb das Buch als "eine absolut aufnahmefähige Odyssee".
Viel ernster war ihre Untersuchung der Gewalt in Nordirland.
Belfrage hat viele Monate damit verbracht, Teilnehmer des sektiererischen Hasses in den von Armut betroffenen Vierteln von Belfast zu interviewen. Schließlich gelangte sie zu der traurigen Schlussfolgerung, dass es schwierig sein würde, den Konflikt zu beenden, da viele Einzelpersonen und Gruppen ein Interesse daran hatten, das bestehende System von Ungerechtigkeit und Gewalt aufrechtzuerhalten.
Belfrage hatte Freunde und Bewunderer auf der ganzen Welt und war bekannt für ihren Mut, ihren Sinn für Humor und ihren Mangel an Snobismus. Als aktive Teilnehmerin an der Frauenbewegung im Vereinigten Königreich gehörte sie zu einer Gruppe enger Freunde, die [[Jill Tweedie]] während ihrer letzten Krankheit unterstützten. Tage nach Tweedies Tod im Dezember 1993 erfuhr Belfrage, dass sie Krebs im Endstadium hatte.
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatte sie das Manuskript ihres letzten Buches fertiggestellt, die autobiografischen unamerikanischen Aktivitäten: Eine Erinnerung an die fünfziger Jahre. Sally Belfrage verbrachte die letzten Wochen ihres Lebens damit, die Galeeren-Beweise zu durchgehen, die [[Nora Sayre]] in den konformistischen Jahren des Kalten Krieges und Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]] als ihre "faszinierende und unwiderstehliche" Lebenserinnerung bezeichnete.
Die Kritiken von Un-American Activities waren enthusiastisch. [[Victor Navasky]] führte das Rudel an: "Sally Belfrage's schöne Memoiren sind herzzerreißend, witzig und so achterbahnartig wie das Jahrzehnt, das sie für immer festgehalten hat."
Es war eine Überprüfung, die Belfrage nicht erlebt hat.
Sie starb am 14. März 1994 in London.
Viele Jahre zuvor hat ihr Freund [[Orson Welles]] ihr Wesen liebevoll eingefangen und Belfrage als "eine gute, altmodische internationale Plage" bezeichnet.<ref>[[John Haag]] 1947, Associate Professor University of Georgia, Atlanta Georgia author of chapters in books including Who Were the Fascists?, Austria in the Age of the French Revolution 1789-1815, and Austria 1938-1988: Marginal men and the dream of the Reich: eight Austrian national -catholic intellectuals, 1918-1938.. in Anne Commire, Women in World, 1999, [https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22London+School+of+Economics.%22+%22Her+notebooks%22&dq=%22London+School+of+Economics.%22+%22Her+notebooks%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJi_uUptbmAhXPblAKHYesBS4Q6AEIPDAC S. 366]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22a+unique,+outrageous,+lively+and+intelligent+account+of%22&dq=%22a+unique,+outrageous,+lively+and+intelligent+account+of%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS3MCrqdbmAhUDDOwKHYMlA1YQ6AEIKDAA]

[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22On+her+return+from+Peking+to+Moscow,+she+decided+to%22&dq=%22On+her+return+from+Peking+to+Moscow,+she+decided+to%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAq_POp9bmAhWDjKQKHWixBSQQ6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22too+emotionally+conflicted+to+achieve+any+repor-+torial%22&dq=%22too+emotionally+conflicted+to+achieve+any+repor-+torial%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiR4tnvn9bmAhXOX8AKHXS-CBAQ6AEIKjAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22running+a+Freedom+library,+of+the+Negroes,+the+daily+procession+of%22&dq=%22running+a+Freedom+library,+of+the+Negroes,+the+daily+procession+of%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHxLDxrdbmAhVFLFAKHTcmAzUQ6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22the+obscene+phone+calls,+the+cars+that+try+to+run+you+down%22&dq=%22the+obscene+phone+calls,+the+cars+that+try+to+run+you+down%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc57mBsNbmAhUO2qQKHebEBFQQ6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Elephant+Man,+but+the+marriage+broke+down.+She+began+the%22&dq=%22Elephant+Man,+but+the+marriage+broke+down.+She+began+the%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJmIDbsdbmAhXB2qQKHT6GDZ4Q6AEIKDAA]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=i0MOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Much+more+serious+was+her+investigation+of+the%22&dq=%22Much+more+serious+was+her+investigation+of+the%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZrIvmtNbmAhWxsKQKHbkWDuYQ6AEIKDAA S. 367][https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/belfrage-sally-1936-1994]</ref>

==Verwandschaft==
Ihr Bruder war Nicolas Belfrage, der Weinkritiker.<ref>Statement from Nicolas BelfrageCedric Belfrage, my father, has been accused of spying for the USSR in documentation dis-embargoed at midnight on 21st August 2015, [http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/Nicolas-Belfrage-statement.pdf]</ref> Der Bruder ihres Vaters war Bruce Belfrage, der BBC-Nachrichtensprecher während des Zweiten Weltkriegs, und ihr Großonkel war Bryan Powley, der Schauspieler.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ancestry.co.uk/|title=Ancestry® - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records|website=www.ancestry.co.uk|accessdate=22 June 2019}}</ref>

==Veröffentlichungen==
*1958: ''A Room in Moscow'',London : Mayflower-Dell Paperback, 1966, ©1958.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/room-in-moscow/oclc/47783831&referer=brief_results|title=A room in Moscow|first=Sally|last=Belfrage|date=22 June 1966|publisher=Mayflower-Dell Paperback|accessdate=22 June 2019|via=Open WorldCat}}</ref>
*Freedom Summer, New York, 1965, The cultural clash is described by Sally Belfrage, 79–81.
*1982: Flowers of emptiness, Reflexionen über einen Ashram, London, Women's Press, .<ref name="auto">{{cite web|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/flowers-of-emptiness/oclc/320788280&referer=brief_results|title=Flowers of emptiness.|first=Sally|last=Belfrage|date=22 June 1982|publisher=Women's Press|accessdate=22 June 2019|via=Open WorldCat}}</ref>
*1987: The Crack: A Belfast Year London : A. Deutsch, (mit dem Titel Living with War: A Belfast Year für den Vertrieb in den USA),<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/living-in-war-a-belfast-year/oclc/84590094&referer=brief_results|title=Living in war: a Belfast year|first=Sally|last=Belfrage|date=22 June 1987|publisher=Viking|accessdate=22 June 2019|via=Open WorldCat}}</ref> 
*1990: ''Freedom Summer'', Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, <ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/freedom-summer/oclc/861041871&referer=brief_results|title=Freedom summer|first=Sally|last=Belfrage|date=22 June 1999|publisher=University Press of Virginia|accessdate=22 June 2019|via=Open WorldCat}}</ref> 
*1994: ''Un-American Activities: A Memoir of the Fifties'', ,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/unamericanactivi00sall|title=Un-American activities: a memoir of the fifties|first=Sally|last=Belfrage|date=22 June 1995|publisher=HarperPerennial|accessdate=22 June 2019|via=Open WorldCat}}</ref> 

==Einzelhinweise==
<references/>
==Anmerkungen==
<references group="A" />

{{Normdaten|TYP=p|GND=119236230|VIAF=74658617}}
{{Authority control}}

{{SORTIERUNG:Belfrage, Sally Mary Caroline}}
[[:Kategorie:Journalist (Vereinigtes Königreich)]]
[[:Kategorie:Zeitungsjournalist]]
[[:Kategorie:Hörfunkjournalist]]
[[:Kategorie:Brite]]
[[:Kategorie:Geboren 1936]]
[[:Kategorie:Gestorben 1994]]
[[:Kategorie:Frau]]

{{Personendaten
|NAME=Belfrage, Sally
|ALTERNATIVNAMEN=
|KURZBESCHREIBUNG=britische Schriftstellerin und Journalistin
|GEBURTSDATUM=4. Oktober 1936
|GEBURTSORT= [[Hollywood]] 
|STERBEDATUM=14. März 1994
|STERBEORT=[[Middlesex Hospital]] in London
}}

<!---
Obituaries, Sally Belfrage Dies; Writer Specializing In Memoirs Was 57
By Eric Pace, March 15, 1994
The New York Times
March 15, 1994, Section B, Page 10
Sally Belfrage, who wrote nonfiction books about life in an Indian ashram and about the civil rights movement in Mississippi in 1964, died yesterday at Middlesex Hospital in London. She was 57 and lived in London.
The cause was cancer, said her literary agent, Irene Skolnick.
Ms. Belfrage (pronounced BELL-fridge) spent a month studying under an Indian spiritual leader to gather material for "Flowers of Emptiness: Reflections on an Ashram" (1981). The book won her praise as an intelligent and humorous journalist and critic who ardently searched for the truth.
Her Mississippi memoir, "Freedom Summer" (1965), based on her experience as a civil rights volunteer, was lauded for freshness and forcefulness.
Her other books are "A Room in Moscow" (1959), about a sojourn in the Soviet Union and "Living With War: A Belfast Year" (1987). "Un-American Activities," a memoir of her adolescence, is to be published in June by HarperCollins. Youth in Hollywood and London
Ms. Belfrage was born in Hollywood, the daughter of Cedric Belfrage and Molly Castle, Britons who were then correspondents for London newspapers. In "Un-American Activities" she wrote, "My mother was a mere English eccentric, but my father was a Red and so in trouble all the time."
After her family moved east, she attended Bronx High School of Science, Hunter College and, after moving to London when she was 18, the London School of Economics. In 1957, she worked for the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow.
Her 1965 marriage to Bernard Pomerance, who wrote the play "The Elephant Man," ended in divorce in 1976.
She is survived by a daughter, Eve Pomerance of London; a son, Moby Pomerance of Manhattan; a brother, Nicholas, of London, and a sister, Anne Zribi of Paris.

Seite 366
A Room in Moscow, brought her instant fame Born Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage, Sally (1936-1994) American journalist and memoirist whose first book, A Room in Moscow, brought her instant fame. Born Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage in Hollywood, California, on October 4, 1936; died in London on March 14, 1994; daughter of Cedric Belfrage ans Molly Castle, student in New York City and at the London School of Economics; married  Bernhard Pomeance, in 1965; childreen Eve and Moly
Anne Commire, Women in World History, 1999

 
Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage was born Oct. 4, 1936 in Hollywood, California, the daughter of English writers. Her father. Cedric Belfrage, was a journalist and film writer, who was associated with the American left. When her parents' marriage ended. Sally moved with her father to New York...
AB Bookman's Weekly: For the Specialist Book World, 1994, [https://books.google.de/books?id=jPk9AAAAMAAJ&q=%22When+her+parents%27+marriage+ended.+Sally+moved+with+her+father+to+New+York%22&dq=%22When+her+parents%27+marriage+ended.+Sally+moved+with+her+father+to+New+York%22&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiR65OvhdbmAhUENOwKHSyYARoQ6AEIKDAA 2640]</ref>

Obituary: Sally Belfrage, JESSICA MITFORD, in [[The Independent]], 16. März 1994, 

Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage, writer: born Hollywood, California 4 October 1936; married 1965 Bernard Pomerance (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1983); died London 14 March 1994.

IN 1955, we were all more or less on the lam. My husband Bob and I arrived in London using revoked American passports; our friend Cedric Belfrage had just been deported from the United States to his native England as a subversive alien. America was going through the convulsions of McCarthyism. Cedric, a long-time US resident and editor of a left-wing national weekly published in New York, had fallen afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Birds of a feather, Bob and I often visited the Belfrage household in London. As we sat plotting the overthrow of the US government by force and violence - or, more accurately, discussing what London plays might be worth seeing - a stunningly beautiful creature would dash into the sitting-room, give her Dad a kiss, and be off quick as a wink to a party. This was 19- year-old Sally, long of leg, blonde of hair, blue of eye.

We were in London again when Sally, then aged 21, once more darted into view. She was writing A Room in Moscow. A vivid memory: Cedric told us, 'Sally has got no idea what it takes to be a writer. She's too damn popular, out every night until Lord knows what hour, and then of course she sleeps until noon. I keep explaining to her that she'll never get the book done that way, one has to be disciplined to write . . .'

A year or so later the book was published to great critical acclaim in England and the United States. Sally was feted everywhere, brought by her publisher to New York for interviews. I remember reading an article in Reynolds News - I think that was it - in which the writer interviewed father and daughter. He thought that the daughter had surpassed her paternal mentor.

Sally, who adored her father, might have disputed that. But to me, the writer did have a point, as evidenced in her next book. In 1964 she joined the intrepid band of civil-rights volunteers from all over America to make the dangerous journey into Mississippi as part of a bold, and ultimately historic, challenge to the most murderously racist state in America.

Out of this brave effort at least a dozen worthy books emerged. Of these, only Sally's Freedom Summer (1965) has the authentic ring of an enduring classic.

Leafing through it today, I still feel the chills and thrills of first reading, as each character springs alive from the page. In a typical Sally-ism, she describes fear as 'a condition, like heat or night or blue eyes. You had to arrange your fear as a parallel element in the day and night, to exist beside it and to function without its interference.'

Over the years, Bob and I got to know Sally Belfrage better and better - first as a contemporary of my daughter Constancia Romilly, when they would wheel their respective babies in prams around New York together, and later as an indispensable London friend whose welcome was always unalloyed joy.

My last letter from Sally came just a few weeks before she died. We'd been corresponding about the possibility of a book tour for her forthcoming autobiography, UnAmerican Activities. She had been diagnosed some months before with incurable cancer, but 'What the hell?' was her attitude.

Well - I can just see her wowing them with this on the chat shows.

It just so happens that Un-American Activities is the best, the most profound and the most amusing account ever written by a former Red Diaper Baby. Stay tuned for reviews this August.


###

The Nation - Bände 258-259 - Seite 62
1994 
That's what I love about him”) expired on the couch of a Long Island abortionist in 1954. ... that “Pinko Cedric Belfrage, who edits a smelly sheet in NYC [the National Guardian], will be taken from West Street jail to be deported probably tomorrow. ... 

Molly Castle raised Sally and her younger brother Nicky, building a career for herself at McCalls, and then, when she refused to testify against Cedric, and the F.B.I. got her fired, starting over again as a ghostwriter for the medical press. It was this “wonky” apolitical lady writer who picked up the pieces, but whose teary outbursts over her husband's abandonment, and her apparent preference for Nicky, Sally never forgave. Curbing her own anger when her father turned his


BOOKS OF THE TIMES; How Un-American Can a 1950's Teen-Ager Get?
By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
July 11, 1994
The New York Times
July 11, 1994, Section C, Page 16
Un-American Activities A Memoir of the 50's By Sally Belfrage 263 pages. HarperCollins. $22.50.
In "Un-American Activities: A Memoir of the 50's," Sally Belfrage describes with verve, grace and remarkable wit what it was like to live through an unusually perilous adolescence. Her parents had descended from the British upper class by way of Hollywood, where the author was born in 1937. Their eventual crash landing in New York City left Ms. Belfrage the ultimate misfit as she entered her teen years in 1950.

A Britisher in America, a poor girl in middle-class Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx, a WASP in the mostly Jewish Bronx High School of Science, a child of a troubled marriage and, most distressingly to her, an un-American at the height of the McCarthy era by virtue of her parents' three-month membership in the Communist Party and her father's continuing espousal of left-wing causes, Ms. Belfrage lived in dread of not one but two D-words: divorce and deportation.

As she writes in the prologue of her book: "The phone was tapped from the minute I could talk on it, and the F.B.I. had been at the door since I was tall enough to turn the knob. Our name was unique and unmistakable, therefore everybody knew. And even in white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America, wherever we went we were just about the only white Protestants, and atheists to boot."

Her reaction, understandably enough, was to plunge into the mainstream. She modeled her oversized pale self on a zippy dark-haired neighbor whose mission in life was to be popular and superficial. The result won her the attention of Dan King, a Jewish boy attending West Point whose mother feared her son's career would be jeopardized by Ms. Belfrage's background. ("He should go with the daughter of a Commie, get himself a traitor for a father-in-law? . . . And never mind what you're doing to me, you're giving me such a stomach.")



The strain on Ms. Belfrage was barely tolerable. "My mind feels like a zoo, full of savage animals clawing and shrieking to get at one another," she writes. "They will eat each other up unless I keep on mending fences. But between Dan and my father, I am the fence. Whenever I am with one of them, I am ashamed of the other." And despite preserving her virginity in obedience to the rule of the day that nice girls didn't do it, she still ended up getting pregnant by Dan. ("No penetration, as they put it later, one in a million, but there you are: you're pregnant.")

Yet despite all her blundering, the ugly duckling grew up to be a swan. And in "Un-American Activities," she looks back on it all with caustic amusement and a pitch-perfect ear for the cliches that defined the all-American girl she was striving to become, whether her efforts involved practicing her signature-to-be or knitting what she describes as "an argyle sock for the beloved foot."

Paradoxically, Ms. Belfrage's testy depiction of her mother, Molly Castle, the writer and magazine editor, makes you end up feeling sympathetic toward the woman, while the affectionate portrait of her father, Cedric Belfrage, the founding co-editor of the left-wing National Guardian, leaves you feeling highly skeptical of the man.

Ms. Belfrage professes to have worshiped her father, who, she says, charmed people wherever he went. But her final judgment of him is not appealing: "The trouble with my father, as with other gods, is that he can accept responsibility on levels both cosmic and commonplace -- like deciding how the world or a bunch of flowers should be arranged -- but he falls down on the job in between, where the lives of the people around him come into the picture."

In her epilogue, which recounts what became of everyone after she grew up, she appears at first to have gone her father's radical way. She writes that "he passed on to me his obsessions about justice and truth," although "they remained abstract for lack of a place or power to believe in the way he had." She adds: "There seemed to be no country with any special purchase on virtue -- except China and Cuba when their revolutions were new and untainted and the people worked as one, with uncommon energy and joy, for the common good."

But after moving to London, raising two children of her own, publishing four books ("A Room in Moscow," "Freedom Summer," "Flowers of Emptiness" and "Living With War: A Belfast Year") and giving up on her marriage to the writer Bernard Pomerance because "in sour moments I think of marriage as an institution between cannibals in which the woman is the meal," she encounters Dan King once again.

He is a two-star general now, working on the Strategic Defense Initiative, President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" project. "A remote-control death man," as Ms. Belfrage puts it. "The guy in charge of Armageddon." Yet the old flame still burns in her. "I thought: Oh, no. After all this time, all these layers and accretions of what passed for civilization and sophistication and sense, there she sits, alive and bubbling away inside the person I thought I was: this despicable tiny-minded conformist of the 50's, a regular Girl Scout cookie (who knows, still desperate for the ranch house in suburbia, split-level two-car garage, rotating sprinkler), impressed out of her mind by some tough-guy Rocketman."

In "Un-American Activities," Sally Belfrage, who died of brain cancer in March at the age of 57, has left behind a funny-sad chronicle about the impossible contradictions of being human.


-->