A review by katrinky
Unbought And Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm

3.0

Recommended from a bell hooks talk I listened to- she mentioned this book as an autonomous work by an influential African-American woman, telling her own, self-driven story. I'm not from New York, and am too young to have known Chisholm as an active political player, but I appreciate the frankness of her story and the detail in her campaigns and rise through the political ranks in her home state. Her language is old-fashioned to read today, for better and worse. It does make me pine for (and acknowledge the perennial shortcomings of) political activism via committee- it's how she got started, but it's also disheartnening to know it was as tedious a process to enact change at the neighborhood and city level in 1972 as it is today. I wish I'd known more about her when she was alive.