Assata
1987
- black panther party
- black nationalism
- race relations
- black feminism
- racism
- african americans
- biography
- african american women political activists
- noirs américains
- biographies
The story
On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (previously known as JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder. This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou. Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison. She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.
What it’s like
Plain, direct first-person-style prose gives way to a wry, unsentimental voice that moves between childhood streets, dim hospital rooms, and the cramped, echoing blocks of prisons, with the sensory world of 1950s and 60s Black neighborhoods sketched in heat, music, and the rhythms of family life. The mood is defiant and reflective, closer to a long conversation over a kitchen table than to a thriller, though the subject is state surveillance and the pressure of being hunted. Pacing is steady and digressive, with reflective stretches on political organizing and friendship alongside tense, close accounts of arrest, interrogation, and confinement. Its intensity is real but not gratuitous: there are gunfire and a police shooting described plainly, medical neglect, handcuffing, and the grind of solitary and prison abuse, but little graphic gore and no sexual content. The emotional arc follows a woman hardening under pressure without losing her humor or her faith in collective struggle. It suits readers who want an unflinching, politically charged life story in a clear, witty voice, and anyone drawn to first-hand accounts of 20th-century Black radical politics and the American carceral system.
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