pierretascher's Full Review: Assata Shakur - Assata: An Autobiography
I had the privilege of reading Assata Shakur's autobiography, Assata: An Autobiography, during the summer of my junior year of college when one of my wonderful radical friends gave me this book and Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power: A Woman's Story to read. I devoured both books and both had profound impacts on me.I remember after reading this book, I was at a hotel in North Carolina, I sat it down on the coffee table and wept.
Assata Shakur: An Autobiography,published in 1987, after Assata was well-established as a political refugee, provides an account of the life of one of the most awe-inspiring leaders of the Black Power Movement and provides great clarity and detail as to the events that led up to her flight from the United States in the early 80s. This book is testimony as to the machinations of the federal government against Assata Shakur and other radical figures in the United States. This book is her story of why she felt she had to escape from the United States and why she has never been able to return. I felt, as now the United States has just offered a one million dollar bounty on Assata Shakur, that I would write a review of her book, in show of my solidarity with her cause and with the belief and good will offering that this government will never get its hands on Assata Shakur.
Born Joanne Chesimard in New York City, Assata grew up in a working class neighborhood in the midst of one of the most diverse metropolises in the world and exposed to some of the most progressive movements at that time. Later, just out of high school and as a student at CUNY, she became involved with the Black Panther Party and was thrown into the mix of Black Power and revolutionary politics. After leaving the Black Panther Party, she became a leader in the Black Liberation Army, where she was effective in developing many community uplift programs and in fighting racist oppression in all aspects of its existence.
The book begins with an account of the the events which would lead to her being railroaded through the New York and federal penal system. On May 2nd, 1973, Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, and Zayd Shakur were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by two white police officers. They were, at that time leaders in the Black Power Movement and were respectively, a student, a scientist at NASA, and a community leader and activist.
Pulled over to the side of the road, the three were ordered out of their car and ordered to stand with their hands in the air. Zayd Shakur was killed and an exchange of bullets began in which one of the white officers was also shot and killed, according to testimony from official experts, by bullets from the other police officer's gun. Also, according to the experts at the trial, Assata Shakur at that time held no gun and her hands were up in the air, as was ascertained from the wounds that she recieved.
While laying in a hospital bed, near death and barely holding on to consciousness, several bullets having entered her body--including one lodged in her clavicle-- which neurologists state was the reason why it was impossible for her to have been holding a gun, she was handcuffed to her bed and charged with the murders of both Zayd Shakur and the white police officer killed at the scene.
The media campaign against her was skillfully crafted on the part of the government and its cohorts. She was portayed in the media and posters were placed throughout the country (including Black communities where she was being heralded as a hero) that labeled her as "armed, dangerous, and of the criminal element"(adjectives similar to those used to describe Angela Davis by Richard Nixon). Indeed, she was caught in the hands of the white, racist government. Alas, to show how contrived this campaign against Shakur was, after her arrest she was tried six times on six different sets of charges and acquitted each time.
In 1977, before an all-white jury (this fact alone is enough to tell these people to go to h***), she was convicted of the murder of Zayd Shakur and the white police officer that was present at the scene. In the mid-80s, with the help of some wonderful people, she escaped and eventually emerged in Cuba. Here she declared, " I am a 20th Century escaped slave." Indeed, she is free, but she daily suffers from the separation from her family, her loved ones, and all that exile brings.
Alas, it doesnt matter how many letters Christy Todd Whitman writes to Fidel Castro or how money they place on her head, they never get their hands on Assata Shakur. This woman is one of the finest and most exemplary personifications of personal integrity and the wealth of human spirit that I have ever encountered. Her book was a wonderful experience for me.
Not only is Shakur a humanitarian and an activist for the betterment of all humanity, she is a poetic soul, which she demonstrates in the book with the wonderful verses that she has composed over the years, their beauty, their integrity, their meaning.
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