Out of Sight!: Memoir of a San Francisco Hippie

What was it like to be in the midst of the counterculture movement as a white teen girl with a critical eye? Out of Sight! is Barbara Sanford Rahder’s memoir, a coming-of-age story set in the iconic time and place of 1960s San Francisco. At sixteen, Barbara moved into her sister’s one-bedroom apartment in Haight-Ashbury and was quickly drawn into hippie life: dancing in the street, smoking pot, striking to expose racism in college, marching with thousands to protest the Vietnam war, joining a commune, living on a precarious houseboat. But there was a shadow side as well-sexism, racism, abuse, incarceration, and police brutality. Many of the changes of the era came with an underbelly of power, privilege, and violence that was hidden from view or forgotten.

Out of Sight! weaves one young woman’s experience during a transformative time with unflinching observations on gender, race, and power. Sad, funny, painful, and always very real, Barbara’s story brings a new, critical perspective to the hippie era. And throughout it all ripples an undercurrent of disturbing family tensions. Things that are hidden ＂out of sight＂ are not easily confronted, but secrets have a way of surfacing.