In the process, they realized that Goldman had spent 20% of her exile in Toronto and “that her time here was crucial” with “its own story to tell.” Expecting to write a pamphlet based on newspaper research, they found rich and largely untapped primary sources, including documents in the Emma Goldman Papers Project headed by Candace Falk. After a “prominent literary man” and publisher who belonged to Moritz’s anarchist group in Toronto wanted a study of Goldman’s Toronto exile to replace the “few random, fragmentary anecdotes that kept being repeated,” explained Moritz at the symposium, he and Theresa Moritz took it on. As a poet, lifelong anarchist, and Goldman biographer, Moritz stands out from the many cultural producers who have drawn inspiration from Goldman his ability to write in two registers (historical and literary) lends richness and depth to Inheriting Your Life. Inheriting Your Life is both erudite and intimate, and a love letter to Emma. Moritz’s 22-minute epic poem did not disappoint. We hoped, too, that a poem written by Toronto’s Poet Laureate to mark a major anniversary of Goldman’s death could help bring wider attention to Goldman’s activism in Toronto and that of the multilingual community of Yiddish, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and other comrades who lived the revolution as best they could. Our invitation to Moritz fit with our project on how generations of activists and cultural producers have recovered, invoked, and remade Goldman and what that tells us about the continuities, discontinuities, and complexities of anarchist history. A prolific, award-winning poet, Moritz is also co-author, with Theresa Moritz, of The World’s Most Dangerous Woman: A New Biography of Emma Goldman (Subway 2001), the only full-length study of Goldman’s three residencies in Toronto during the 1920s and 1930s. Moritz, Poet Laureate of Toronto (2019-23), of Inheriting Your Life: Homage to Emma Goldman, an original poem written at our request. Vladimir Institute.īut the event’s most explicitly commemorative moment was a reading by A.F. Over two years later, in October 2022, we finally hosted that University of Toronto-sponsored Symposium, and a performance by the Theatre Group of the Toronto Workers’ History Project of Craig Heron’s Emma’s Last Visit (directed by Aida Jordão) at St. As historians researching the intergenerational memory of Goldman’s Toronto exile, we wanted to bring together scholars, activists, and cultural workers involved in new research and critical engagement with Goldman and anarchist history.

When the pandemic came, we were planning a symposium to mark the 80 th anniversary of Emma Goldman’s 1940 death in Toronto. Library of Congress.įranca Iacovetta & Cynthia Wright, with thanks to A.F.

A Dangerous Woman by Sharon Rudahl