I’ve mentioned my history with book clubs more than once. But I’m trying one more time, with #BecauseWe’veRead, and their inaugural choice, Assata An Autobiography.

Common

I’ve meant to read Assata ever since Common’s album Like Water for Chocolate. Like everyone else, I was drawn into that album by the single “The Light.”

But the song that stuck with me was “Song for Assata.” It sounded like fiction to me. I’d never heard of this person, and it was hard for me to believe a story like that could happen in the U.S. I’ve been a member of Amnesty International since high school, and the details described in the song sounded like the facts in an Amnesty Action. But the song ends with a sample of Assata’s own voice, speaking about freedom. The woman is real.

I looked her up and found out there was a book – her autobiography. At the time I was a broke grad student. I kept an eye out for the book in the used bookstores for a while, but eventually sort of forgot about it. Every now and then something would remind me that I meant to research this woman, but I never got around to it.

JooJoo Azad

A while back I discovered Hoda Katebi, an Iranian-American Muslim hijab political-fashion blogger. Her blog JooJoo Azad (Farsi for “Free Bird”) wasn’t very active at the time. But the older posts were a fascinating commentary on culture, fashion, and politics. She was such an interesting person, I followed the mostly silent blog anyway. Last month, she posted an announcement that she would be hosting a virtual, radical reading book club on the blog.

The new project was inspired by an interview she had given on WGN. During the interview, she made a factual statement that many of the weapons used in Middle Eastern conflicts originated in the United States. The host replied that such a statement was offensive to many viewers and said Katebi “didn’t sound like an American.” In the moment Katebi laughed it off with, “That’s because I’ve read!” But the exchange struck a nerve with her and many of her followers.

#BecauseWe’veRead

The outcome is a virtual book club designed to challenge the simplistic narratives that dominate the mainstream news cycles. Here’s how it works:

1. The first week of every month, Katebi announces her book selection, together with supporting information and resources, like articles, films, etc.
2. There’s a book giveaway on social media, and various efforts to make access to the book easier for those who can’t afford to buy it. (In addition to the free copies, downloads, and discounts, don’t forget your public library).
3. At the end of each month, there’s a discussion on Instagram live with a different guest. There are also a bunch of other community-type things like meet-ups, etc. that I ignored.

Assata

Her first selection, for the month of April, 2018, was the autobiography of Assata Shakur. I ordered it from Amazon and finally read it. I’m glad I did. I had already begun to realize how off-base our common conception of the Black Panthers is, thanks to the Seattle Public Library’s Global Reading Challenge for 4^th and 5^th graders. Through reading along with the kiddos, I discovered author Rita Williams-Garcia and her delightful Gaither sisters. In One Crazy Summer, the Gaither sisters spend the summer of 1968 with their activist mother in Oakland. This book for 10-year-olds clued me in to the fact that my American history class left out a few things. Assata fills in some of those gaps.

The Book

Anyway, Assata Shakur is a good writer, and tells her own story well. She is obviously writing from an extreme political viewpoint, and carefully glosses over parts of her story that might detract from her status of “innocent victim.” But even so, she makes a pretty strong case that the Black Panther party and other activists of their generation were targeted and set up by the government; that she was, in fact, a political prisoner; and that her treatment at the hands of our government would have been grounds for an Amnesty International action.

My only criticism with the writing is grammatical. Like many extremely political people, Shakur lets her politics bleed into everything she does. But I have to draw the line at spelling. Spelling America with a lowercase or a “k” instead of a “c” does not make an effective statement. It just pulls people out of the story. Plus, it’s almost impossible to be consistent about it. Sometimes she capitalizes the word “I” and sometimes she doesn’t. It’s just jarring and not meaningful. Similarly, Brooklyn gets a capital, but new jersey doesn’t. That probably reflects her opinion on the two places, but she’s a good writer – we are going to get that message without the funky, distracting grammar.

My Take

What struck me most was the sense of wasted potential. There was so much energy and talent among the young people who were radicalized in the sixties. If the FBI hadn’t defined America’s interests as “maintaining the status quo,” those young people could have gone on to achieve great things. Imagine how different things might be today if all the kids who ate free Black Panther breakfasts had continued getting fed until they grew up. Imagine their afternoons spent learning African drumming and studying politics instead of hanging out on the streets. How different might things have been for an entire generation of urban kids?

It’s strange to hear an intelligent woman like Assata talk about armed resistance. She herself said the black population of the U.S. was only about 15% in those days. She also talked about how few blacks were politically conscious, let alone radicals, even at the height of the movement. Even if all the minorities banded together, and all of them favored violent revolution, they wouldn’t have had the numbers. She had to know the numbers didn’t add up.

That’s one reason her book serves to help us understand how oppression radicalizes young people who are smart enough to know better. Without governmental interference, the Black Panthers would probably have collapsed through infighting like nearly all extreme political movements before them. But they probably would have accomplished a lot of good before that happened. Perhaps their political stance would have even softened with success, as has happened with nearly every surviving political movement in history.

Poetry

What struck me most about Assata was not her politics, but her poetry. Poets are all radicals; but radicals are rarely poets. Assata is both. Her autobiography is scattered with poetry. I wish that we lived in a world where I could read a book of her poems about life instead of a book about her life of punishment.

Affirmation

I believe in living.
I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.

I believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted.

I have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference.

I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know any thing at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.

I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port.

”Affirmation” is reprinted from Assata: An Autobiography. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books), p. 1. (1987/2001).

May

Find out what the #BecauseWe’veRead book club choice for May is on JooJooAzad.