Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

Uma Autobiografia by Angela Y. Davis

8 reviews

waybeyondblue's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative inspiring tense medium-paced

3.75

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angievansprang's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

4.5

This autobiography is incredibly powerful and informative. Angela Davis is an admirable activist specifically for Black liberation and freedom from unjust incarceration of BIPOC in the US. I would definitely recommend this read if you are interested in learning more about the prison-industrial complex!
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erebus53's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

I read this book for a book challenge to read a book 1-5 years older than me and written in the month of my birth. I'll take a sec to say that the prompt is delightfully nebulous enough to not come across as a breach of privacy.

Angela Davis is an icon of the Black Rights movement in USA, and as a Feminist and a Communist she has had a lot to fight against in her life. A book called an autobiography, and published when she was only 28 seems to be very early in her life. I guess that the content of the book also shows how short that life could have been if she was as unlucky as some of the activists she associated with, so if only for that reason I can understand the motivation to tell her story.

This book was edited by Toni Morrison, the first Black woman to be employed as a publisher at Random House. This edition of the audiobook is self narrated by Angela Davis, and also contains an account of the prologues of the subsequent editions of the autobiography, that illustrated some of the development of her political philosophy. I truly appreciate that, in the spirit or Communism, the start of this audiobook is a self-criticism of things that might have been better expressed had the work been written now. Primarily, Dr Davis apologises for her Ableism (calling people mad, and crazy etc.) and her negative reflections about homosexual relationships within prisons.

Parts of this story are stirring and exciting, whereas others are tense, unjust, and stressful. Having been a political activist and a political prisoner, who spent some time as a fugitive, parts of the narrative feel almost like a paranoid spy movie. It's unfortunate that no matter how you spin it, law court shenanigans and procedure are a horrid, and dry affair (even for the stagnant courtroom sweat).

I think in summation this is a valuable insight into the power and control structures of USA in the 1970s, that show how far we have come, and yet how much more needs to be done for an egalitarian world.
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notthatcosta's review against another edition

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dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

In 2023 it's difficult to conceive a court case built around a non-celebrity that was able to cultivate an international solidarity movement, but this book does an excellent job of laying the groundwork to understand the context of where Angela Davis' activism fit within the crossover of the Cold War and the movement for Black liberation.

I also enjoyed the way in which Angela builds in her backstory, the origins of her activism and how travel and academia both sit so centrally in the forcing of her political identity. 

All of this, plus the vivid descriptions of her experiences in the prison system AND the two forwards she added to the original book in both 1988 and 2011 make it feel both singular and relevant to this moment in time.

My one complaint would be the size of some of the sections in relation to others, and my own inability to register the many names she references throughout the book.
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redcapediver's review against another edition

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4.5

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kshertz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative inspiring slow-paced

5.0

I mean honestly how do you give Angela Davis’s life anything less than five stars? I did have to constantly remind myself that this was written in the 1970s though. It’s very interesting how much of her life I had never heard about and how much of her history is not out in the world even though it really should be common knowledge in terms of it being very historical and very important. It must’ve been very difficult for her and her team to pick and choose what to include in this book and it already is a really long book. There were parts of the book I really wanted to know more about and they were parts of the book I felt like I didn’t really need but I think everyone probably feels that way about memoirs and autobiographies. Angela herself is just more factual and I am personally a lot more emotional so sometimes I wanted her emotional take on some of the stuff that was happening to her and she was just more wanting to explain how it was affecting the movement and other things and intersectionality and really defending the movement which I completely understand. I truly find it to be a snapshot of a really important part of history and something that everyone should really take the time to read so they can really understand the 1960s and 70s.
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202claire's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

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le0manchmal's review against another edition

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challenging informative inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

4.75

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