Nation: The Liberation of Kate Millet

THERE is the past as well as the present in Kate Millett's declaration, "Women's Liberation is my life." In a voice barely above a murmur, trembling at times with emotion, she speaks of the experiences that produced Sexual Politics with the same articulate rage that distinguishes her book.

She excoriates much about her middleclass, Irish-Catholic childhood in St. Paul: the strict parochial schooling, financial hardships, the attitudes of her neighbors. But nothing dominates her memory as do the personalities of her parents: a father who beat her and her sisters, then walked out...