I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac takes the reader from Kerouac's childhood years in Lowell, Massachusetts through his World War II years in New York City and across America, where the hapless writer searches for his voice as a writer and an artist. Using archival material such as journals, notebooks, diaries and letters as well as Kerouac's published books, this portrait serves to bring into focus the internal and external forces that forged the leader of the Beat Generation's highly-original poetry and prose.