Naomi Klein: A Brief Biography

Naomi Klein was born on May 5, 1970 in Montreal, Quebec into a political family. Her mother, Bonnie Sherr Klein, directed Not a Love Story, an anti-pornography film which looked into the life of a stripper named Linda Lee Tracey, in 1981, while her father, Michael Klein, is a member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her brother, Seth Klein, became the B. C. Director of the Vancouver office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in 1997, and her grandfather was an animator at Disney who was fired for attempting to organize a labor union as well as staging the company’s first strike; he was subsequently blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy.

As a child, Naomi Klein was drawn by advertisements and brand names. She was obsessed with Barbie, designer jeans, and other merchandise she could buy. She was also dazzled by the logos of many corporations, especially the incandescent sign of Shell, which was “so bright and cartoon-like I was convinced that, if I could climb up and touch it, it would be like touching something from another dimension - from the world of TV.” She used to stitch fake logos onto her shirts in order to make them look like the genuine article.

Klein then became a journalist and a writer for The Nation and The Guardian. In 2000 she wrote No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, which has turned into an international phenomenon along with winning both the Canadian National Business Book Award and the French Prix Médiations. In 2002, she publishedFences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, a collection of many of her previous works. She released The Take in 2004, a documentary directed by herself and her husband, Avi Lewis, about the plight of unemployed workers in Argentina. Klein has currently released her new book titled The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism.


Information from:
http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/groups/2007/sites/klein/biography.html