UA professor pens first biography of 1930s communist Michael Gold

Michael Gold was one of the most prolific writers of the American communist movement of the mid-20th century, but if you ask the general public—or even some English teachers—if they know his name, you may get blank stares in return.

Dr. Patrick Chura

To remedy this, Dr. Patrick Chura from the Department of English at The University of Akron (UA) has written the first biography of Gold, "Michael Gold: The People’s Writer," set for release on Dec. 1, 2020, by SUNY Press.

“One of the big casualties of the Cold War was a lot of 1930s literature. English departments and American studies in general were very much against the type of work that made Gold famous during the McCarthy era and it stayed that way for far too long,” Chura said.

Gold was a key figure in the movement for proletarian literature and believed deeply in political art for the everyman. Growing up in the tenements of Manhattan, Gold was acquainted with poverty from an early age, an experience that motivated his personal and professional life as he cultivated an authoritative voice in the American communist movement. He penned a famous long-running column titled “Change the World” in the popular leftist paper The Daily Worker. Gold’s semi-autobiographical novel "Jews Without Money" (1930) was even a bestseller at the time of its release.

“For more than ten years I’ve been thinking about whether or not [Gold] was going to get a biography. I believed he deserved one,” said Chura. “The more I learned about his personality, the more I learned that he was a cantankerous and a politically passionate person and writer. ​And he was probably the most famous communist writer in this country during the 1930s.”

Rather than continuing to wait for a biography, Chura decided that he would write it himself. His long journey of research and writing included interviews with Gold’s family and friends, careful review of Gold’s writing, and even a few trips to the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. Chura’s adventures into FBI files speak to the necessity of biography for figures like Gold, who were lost from the literary canon during political strife and McCarthyism.

“I was happy and lucky to get some FBI documents declassified by making a good contact in the National Archives, which helped write the book's last chapters about the 50s and early 60s, when nobody knew much about Gold. He’d been blacklisted so the best information about him was actually held by the FBI,” Chura said.

Chura hopes that his book will revitalize Gold’s readership and remind contemporary readers of a “strong, proud heritage” of marginalized works that have been forgotten through the decades. "Michael Gold: The People’s Writer" is available for purchase here.

Media contact: Lisa Craig, 330-972-7429 or lmc91@uakron.edu.

► Story by Madeline Myers