Recovering Black Identity and History, Feminizing and Regenerating Black Power

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the poetry and prose of Assata: An Autobiography and contextualizes the memoir within the revolutionary aesthetics Black Power vernacular and the political realities of northern Blue Power in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It examines the feminized rhetorical strategies in Assata that help to circulate Black Power activism. Like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Shakur situates herself as a leader and as a martyr using nostalgia for Black Power leaders as inspiration for the activism ahead. She uses black history as a rhetorical resource for new political action and highlights the importance of cultural nationalism. In addition, she commits herself to self-defense and Third World solidarity through a gendered articulation of the Black Power vernacular. Shakur’s vernacular is mobile, flexible, and global as she uses the history of slavery in the U.S. and colonialism abroad to explain the BLA’s resistance to “law and order” culture. Finally, she explains the historical and contemporary exigencies that prompt continued action, including police brutality, the expansion of the prison-industrial complex, judicial corruption, and false accusations of cop killing. Still in print, Assata demands a place for Shakur’s narrative among the prison manifestos of the Black Power movement.