Autobiography as Activism - Three Black Women of the Sixties

Margo V. Perkins

University Press of Mississippi Jackson

2000

161 páginas

5h 22m

ISBN-10: 1578062306

Angela Davis, Assata Shakur (a.k.a. JoAnne Chesimard), and Elaine Brown are the only women activists of the Black Power movement who have published book-length autobiographies. In bearing witness to that era, these militant newsmakers wrote in part to educate and in part to mobilize their anticipated readers.

In this way, Davis's "Angela Davis: An autobiography" (1974), Shakur's "Assata" (1992) can all be read as extensions of the writers' political activism during the 1960s.

Margo V. Perkins's critical analysis of their books is less a history of the movement (or of women's involvement in it) than an exploration of the politics of storytelling for activists who choose to write their lives. She examines how they use autobiography to connect their lives to those of other activists across historical periods, how they emphasize the link between the personal and the political, and how they construct an alternative history that challenges dominant or conventional ways of knowing.

As Davis, Shakur, and Brown recount events in their lives, they impart unique views and insights not shared by their male activist counterparts. They dispute mainstream assumptions about race, class, and gender and reveal how the Black Power struggle profoundly shaped their respective identities.