La playlist di Marilyn Buck

Abstract

Buck's Playlist offers a meditation on memory, political commitment, social justice, and the power of culture in recent American history. The article provides a personal and historical examination of Marilyn Buck, a white woman who spent twenty-five years in prison for her activism in solidarity with the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Sick with advanced ovarian cancer, Buck was granted compassionate release in 2010 and died three weeks later. Here, I reflect on Buck's legacy, drawing from our ten-year correspondence as well as Buck's writings (she became an accomplished poet, translator, and essayist during her incarceration) to argue that Buck's political militancy and cultural commentary constitute a revolutionary ethos that prison redirected but failed to stifle.