Assata Shakur (1947–2025)

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 show more 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. show less

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, show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

my god… I don’t usually rate memoirs or autobiographies but this is to help bring this book forward. I can’t express how deeply this book has shaken my very core. The time I spent reading this, although it was only a few days cause I could not put this done if I had even a minute to spare, has felt like an awakening I thought had already happened. I have so many words after reading yet I have no idea how to get them all out at once. I’m struggling to find a way to speak about this show more with humility and consideration for the voices that should be projected about this book. I will write a report for this book but I will also find ways to platform others. The experience I’ve had with Assta Shakur’s words have not just changed me but have made me feel inspired to find even the smallest ways I can do right by my peers.  show less