A Taste of Power
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
The incredible memoir of Elaine Brown - the first woman leader of the Black Panthers
'Here I was, a woman, proclaiming supreme power over the most militant organization in America'
In 1974 Elaine Brown became the first woman leader of the Black Panther Party. This is her unforgettable memoir, charting her rise from an impoverished neighbourhood in Philadelphia, through her political awakening during a bohemian adolescence, and on to her time as a foot soldier for the Panthers and ascent into its male-dominated upper ranks. It is a seminal exploration of power, racism and one woman's revolutionary struggle.
'Heart-wrenching, wild and moving ... a glowing achievement' Los Angeles Times
'What Elaine Brown writes is so astonishing, at times it is even difficult to believe she survived it. And yet she did, bringing us that amazing light of the black woman's magical resilience' Alice Walker
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brown here relates the dramatic story of her youth, her political awakening and her role in the Black Panther Party when she succeeded her lover Huey Newton to become the group's first female leader. Though smoothly written, the book contains much reconstructed dialogue that may daunt readers. Brown's memoir takes her from a Philadelphia ghetto to California, from college to cocktail waitressing, from wanting to be white to joining the black power movement. She meets Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson and Bobby Seale, goes to jail, visits North Korea and North Vietnam, debates Marxism and gets involved in Oakland, Calif., politics. When other Black Panthers seemed to lose sight of the revolution and seek power for its own sake, Brown, with a growing feminist consciousness, left the group. She now lives in France and expresses ambivalent feelings about the party she once loved. Having made her acquaintance, the reader wonders about her present life.