Deb Olin Unferth

From a Q & A with Deb Olin Unferth about her new book, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War:

How does an 18-year old college freshman even decide to join a revolution?

Love, of course! I fell for a philosophy major, a Christian, and I immediately converted. When he said we should drop out of school and go help foment the socialist revolution in Nicaragua, I said, Good idea.

How did your parents react?

At first I didn't tell them. I wrote them a letter from Mexico and said I'd quit school and had found God and was going to join the revolution. I don't which was worse for them—my running away to a war zone or my becoming a Christian, since we were Jewish.

What kind of jobs are there at the revolution?

Well, unfortunately we were fired from the "revolution jobs" we found (at an orphanage, at Bikes Not Bombs...) because we didn't know how to do anything. But we also conducted interviews. We went from country to country with a handheld cassette tape recorder, recording over our rock music tapes, one by one. We interviewed politicians, priests, artists—anyone we could talk into talking to us.

Were you ever scared?

Sure. It was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue