A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story
Author: Elaine Brown
Brown's account of her life at the highest levels of the Black Panther party's hierarchy. More than a journey through a turbulent time in American history, this is the story of a black woman's battle to define herself.
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. (Jan.)
Library Journal
Brown, who became involved in and eventually led the Black Panther party until 1977, here offers her autobiography. She traces both the growth and evolving philosophies of the party and her own attempts to help black women. She also describes the drug and domestic abuse within the party, as well as vividly depicting the violence committed against society at large. While Brown includes an objective and lengthy description of Panther founder Huey Newton, who brilliantly rallied black people in America, she also depicts a man whose drug and alcohol dependencies hindered the growth of the party. Brown's autobiography ends inconclusively: she does not seem to have grasped how her past actions presently affect her life. Does she experience feelings of guilt or regret? We don't find out, but her story is still interesting. A Taste of Power is recommended for large public and academic libraries and those with women's studies collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/11/92, and ``Malcom X: By Any Book Necessary,'' LJ 10/15/92 . -- Jeanine McAdam, Mt. Sinai Medical Ctr. Lib., New York
Kirkus Reviews
Engrossing, jolting, behind-the-scenes memoir by the woman who led the Black Panther Party to mainstream power-brokering without giving up the guns, and who ended up fleeing its violence: a stunning picture of a black woman's coming of age in America. Brown writes well and insightfully of her complex family background and Philadelphia ghetto childhood, and of her life in a paramilitary organization whose members live under the constant threat of violence from society, police, and each other. In L.A., a wealthy white lover introduces her to Communism; a black activist casually straps bandoleers of shotgun shells around her before a rally; "warriors" expect sexual favors from revolutionary women; close friends die at the hands of a rival black organization and police. Briefly infatuated with Eldridge Cleaver (later a foe), Brown falls in love with brilliant, self-educated, troubled Huey Newton—a man seemingly trapped by the Party he created, and subject to fear-and-cocaine-induced rages; he anoints her Party leader before jumping bail for exile in Cuba (1974). Brown wins the grudging loyalty of the Party's angry men, as well as mainstream respect (for school and social programs in Oakland—largely funded through illegal means) and influence in California politics. She takes pleasure in violent intimidation: "For a black woman in America to know that power is to experience being raised from the dead." Soon after Newton's return in 1977, a terrified Brown leaves the Party. Rhetoric and ideology are presented readably here: Brown identifies her most radical conclusions as opinion. For less political readers, the inherent drama plus anecdotes about revolutionary andshow-biz celebs (including a bit of kiss-and- tell) keep the pages turning. Brown (now in France) doesn't mention her post-Party life or Newton's death in 1989. Timely, front-row view of a turbulent era. Put it on the shelf beside The Autobiography of Malcolm X. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Read also Restoring Your Eyesight or Built to Survive
My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir
Author: Clarence Thomas
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.
His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually "despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation" to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.
Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.
The New York Times - William Grimes
His critics might not be moved by his political arguments, but his memoir gives them a man, not a caricature, to attack…Justice Thomas describes his intellectual journey, and his struggle to keep body and soul together on meager government pay, in some of the book's most absorbing and self-critical chapters.
The Washington Post - Jabari Asim
My Grandfather's Son ends triumphantly as Thomas prepares for his first conference as a member of the Supreme Court. This memoir will not sway those who oppose his fierce, unapologetic conservatism, but it does provide a fascinating glimpse into a tortured, complex and often perplexing personality. Near the end of the book he discusses a desire to allow his life "to be seen as the story of an ordinary person who, like most people, had worked out his problems step by unsure step." In that he has succeeded.
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