The witch hunt

Lillian Florence Hellman was a courageous woman. She said no when everyone else was saying yes. In 1952, writer Lillian Hellman was subpoenaed to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), a pressure-packed tool to denounce as many "leftists" as possible. Lillian responded: "To hurt innocent people, whom I have known for many years, in order to save my own skin, is, in my view, an inhuman, indecent, and dishonorable act." It was the year Joseph McCarthy, at the height of his power, was re-elected to the Senate. But Lillian did not appear before the Senate Committee. She was subpoenaed by a House of Commons Committee—the one that, due to its power and longevity, became the committee of the Cold War era: the House Committee on Un-American Activities. For about a third of this century, the Committee grew exasperated with its ever-growing files. testimonies and reports. Her period of greatest power began in 1948, with the outbreak of the Hiss affair. However, her broad mandate was already explicit in 1947, with the introduction of ideological tests for American products, starting with the film industry. Lillian participated in the most important contribution to 20th-century literature: that of the female voice. This visceral literature took root through writers such as Katherine Masnfield, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker, Joyce Carol Oates, Marguerite Duras, Clarice Lispector, and Ana Cristina Cesar. Social bias (more than political) never prevented Lillian from being a great chronicler of the human soul in its deepest conflicts. In this book, Lillian reflected: "As I finish writing about this unpleasant time in my life, I tell myself that it all happened then, and there is now, and the years between then and now, and then and now are one."