Assata ShakurRecensioni

Assata Shakur fut, dans les années 60 et 70, militante du Black Panther Party et de l’Armée de Libération Noire. Elle a connu le formidable bouillonnement d’une époque de révoltes et d’espérances pour les Noirs des États-Unis, comme la répression. De sa tendre enfance à son exil à Cuba, ses souvenirs se structurent autour du récit d’un emprisonnement de six ans. Une exceptionnelle leçon d’histoire populaire et d’engagement dans laquelle Assata dresse un portrait sans fard de l’oppression raciale et de la violence capitaliste aux États-Unis. Cette autobiographie est une lettre d’amour au peuple noir ainsi qu’à tous les opprimés. Une source d’inspiration inaltérable pour celles et ceux qui, à travers le monde, exigent la dignité et la justice.

Very glad I got round to this.

A very intense, powerful memoir of Assata Shakur's early life intermingled with her life after her arrest and the incredible amount of injustice she faced in numerous court systems, undergoing torturous isolation and other terrible treatment typical of prisons. It's TENSE but so, so powerful. I think you could teach this whole book as a real introduction to why the PIC should be abolished, or you could teach excerpts from her treatment. Her statement that she read in court in particular I think could be a great tool for kids to be introduced to the injustice of the American criminal court system and the US in general.

Just so powerful, I definitely recommend folks read it.

This was an intense read, but one that is very important. It is something that people, especially Americans need to know about. I would recommend it to anyone.

Actually want to reread this as I read it as an undergrad.

Assata Shakur is an African American revolutionary currently living in exile in Cuba after escaping from an American prison. Her name's been in the news a bit lately because one of the arguments against the USA normalizing relations with Cuba is that they harbor terrorists, and when the the American right make this argument, Assata Shakur is usually the terrorist they are talking about. It's hard to know if she is guilty of the crime for which she was being held at the time of her escape, the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. She is a self-identified revolutionary and she does not (or did not at the time of writing her autobiography, anyway) disavow violence in service to the struggle to better the condition of oppressed people. At the same time, these were the bad old days of Cointelpro, the massive and ruthless FBI operation against a variety of domestic political groups including the largely successful infiltration and harassment of the Black Panthers (Assata had been a member). As a part of this program, Assata was charged with a number of crimes on the East Coast simply because they were committed by a black woman who might, more or less plausibly, have been her. She was tried for more than one robbery, murder, and kidnapping for which she was acquitted. Thus it is not hard to believe that her conviction for murder in the killing of the New Jersey trooper was tainted in a number of ways. The autobiography doesn't quite tell, and for obvious reasons there are no details of her escape (though several people were arrested and charged for taking part in it). Whether one agrees or not with the actions that Shakur (may have) committed or abetted it is hard to disagree with most of her analysis of the situation of black people in the USA and America's history of racism. It is sad to note that it seems as accurate today as ever--even with a black president. The book is a gripping read. The slang with which Assata peppers her prose and the loose rhythms with which she writes enliven the book, as does the structure: beginning the night of her arrest for the trooper's murder, and then bouncing between that night and its aftermath and her earlier life where we learn how she turned into the disciplined revolutionary she became.

Great read on her life, the black liberation movement and a voice for civil rights. I highly recommend.

El 12 de mayo de 1973, la integrante de los Panteras Negras Assata Shakur se hallaba en el hospital en estado crítico y esposada a la cama, mientras las autoridades locales y la policía federal trataban de interrogarla acerca del tiroteo en una autopista de Nueva Jersey que costó la vida a un policía blanco. Objetivo que durante mucho tiempo de la campaña de Edgar Hoover para difamar, sabotear y criminalizar las organizaciones nacionalistas negras y a sus líderes, Shakur pasó cuatro años en la cárcel antes de su condena en 1977, sustentada en pruebas poco sólidas. Dos años después de ser condenada, Assata Shakur escapó de la cárcel y obtuvo asilo político en Cuba, donde vive en la actualidad.

great book if you are interested in the subject!

This book is all about racism, and often it’s shocking. But this story of the government persecution of a Black Panther woman is also a book about endurance and strength. It blows my mind that Shakur survived. The book is honest, informative, historically relevant, occasionally polemic but never so much that it becomes boring.

just finished this and it was really well-written and compelling.

I heard a song written about this woman and ran to get the autobiography. it didn't disappoint. it reads like a novel but it is spiritually fulfilling.

Assata's story made me feel as though I could do more in my community and that I was not helpless. Great read. I recommend this book for any and all.

Assata allows the reader into her life, a life of hardship, peril, and struggle. Assata takes the reader from when she was wrongfully accused, to her time in prison, through her pregnancy, and brings the reader to when she left the country due to persecution. I was surprised to discover the story of Assata Shakur, as I was not aware she even existed until I began reading this book. Like so many heroes of the civil rights movement, Assata Shakur deserves to have her story told to a wider audience, and to have more people know what she did and how she struggled for freedom. I would use this work as an addition to a civil rights unit in my class, and look forward to exposing my students to Shakur's story.

One of the best books I've ever read. Definitely the best autobiography/memoir I've read.

Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Front, was accused of being involved in the killing of a New Jersey police. The chapter's alternate between a moment in her childhood and her time being in prison.

Intense book!! Definitely gets you pissed off at the U.S. government and racist bullshit they pull.

Recommended to everyone!

This book literally changed my life. It inspired me to become an activist. We often judge before hearing the whole story. This autobiography sheds light on the accused story. HANDS OFF ASSATA!!!

I saw this on Michelle's goodreads bookshelf, which reminded me I read it in the late 80s. I really liked it, and remember being moved by her story, noting her considerable ability to write. Her life story and experiences as a member of the Black Panther Party are presented compellingly. (She was considered by the law enforcement to be the "soul" of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s.) I have friends who have met her in Cuba, where she has lived in exile, since escaping from prison.

This was an engaging read: Shakur knows how to tell a story, and she calls 'em like she sees 'em. Chapters alternate between her life before going underground in 1971, and her life after being captured on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. The before-underground chapters are a narrative of her increasing education and politicization, beginning with her childhood among the Talented Tenth in North Carolina, and culminating with her membership in the Black Panther Party in New York and going underground after being targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO. There are some moments in the chapters about her early life that delighted me in their recognizability -- I love that as a newly-minted wage-slave, she confused her identity with her employer's. Also, that when employed by a bar to chat men up and have them buy her "drinks," she pretended to the men that she was a mathematics student: after all, no one knows anything about math, and they don't want to risk exposing that by talking about it. (It worked beautifully, right until she ran into a mathematics professor.) I also enjoyed her penny-drop as a teenager when she was talking with some college students and they asked her what she thought of the U.S. going to war in Vietnam. "I guess it's all right," she said. After the shocked silence, when pressed for how she came to that conclusion, she parroted all the newspaper headlines she had been reading, never realizing until that moment that she didn't know the first thing about what any of those words meant, let alone what other notions they were designed to deflect her attention away from. The moral of that story? Know your history, and never let someone else pick your enemies for you.

Eventually, though, she gathered experience and knowledge, and the increasing politicization that went with that pushed her to join the Black Panther Party. She doesn't spend much time giving background on the Panthers, instead discussing her evaluation of their effectiveness and weaknesses, especially critiquing their education program for members (lots of socialist political theory, but no history) and their lack of emphasis on self-critique. In the chapters about the Panthers she also describes being under surveillance by the FBI. (Particularly eerie to me was the detail about how when she stopped paying her phone bill because she could no longer afford a phone, the phone company never cut off her service. Instead, the phone bills just stopped arriving.) She also describes COINTELPRO's successful attempts to sow discord within the Panthers, eventually disintegrating the organization from within.

The alternating chapters, all set after the shoot-out on the New Jersey Turnpike, are a detailed portrait of how the U.S. treats -- or has allegedly treated, depending on how generous toward the U.S. government you wish to be -- its political prisoners, and the ways in which Shakur and her lawyers (most notably Evelyn Williams, her aunt, and William Kunstler, "the most hated lawyer in America") fought back. Shakur's story of the New Jersey Turnpike trial (which was the last of seven, and the only one in which she was convicted), is an unremitting account of judicial bias and government conspiracy. She tells of jurors who were family members of New Jersey state troopers; jurors reading Target Blue in the jury room; her lawyers' offices being burglarized; one of her lawyers dying under suspicious circumstances and the legal strategy documents in his possession being confiscated as evidence, and not being returned by the police.

There are two major silent periods in her autobiography: the time between her membership in the Panthers and her arrest in New Jersey (the time period that spanned the alleged crimes she was indicted for), and the time between her deciding to escape from prison and her resurfacing in Cuba, where she now has political asylum. (According to Wikipedia, since the FBI offered a $1 million bounty for her capture in 2005, she hasn't been very visible in Cuba lately.) Both periods are jumped without announcement or explanation -- not that an explanation is needed, but I did experience a bit of "Wait, what just happened?" each time. And also, much curiosity as to what she would have to say about those periods, if she had the freedom to say it.

I shall absolutely be following up on this one with more reading about the Panthers (including Elaine Brown's autobiography, if I can find it) as well as the autobiographies of Shakur's lawyers Evelyn Williams (again, if I can find it) and William Kunstler.

A very sad book.......all I want to know is why?½

This is my favorite book. I really love how in the book it goes through Assata's life, in a realistic way to make you really feel like you were there. I also like how the book contains a lot of poems in it. Basically the best book ever.