A Taste of Power
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story'' (
Pantheon Books Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
, 1992) is a
memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobi ...
written by
Elaine Brown Elaine Brown (born March 2, 1943) is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman who is based in Oakland, California.Wheaton, Sarah (December 12, 2010)"Inmates in Georgia Prisons Use Contraband Phone ...
. The book follows her life from childhood up through her activism with the
Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
. In the early chapters of the book, Brown recalls growing up on York Street in a rough neighborhood of North Philadelphia. Due to her mother's persistence, she is able to attend an experimental elementary school in a nice neighborhood and becomes friends with some
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
girls. From that point on, Brown describes being a part of two worlds. She'd act "white" while hanging out with her school friends, and "black" when with the girls in her neighborhood. At age 19, Brown moves to California, where she has a love affair with
Jay Kennedy Jay Malcolm Kennedy (April 18, 1956 – March 15, 2007) was an American editor and writer. The author of ''The Official Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide'', he was a long-time editor at King Features Syndicate, eventually rising to the posi ...
. She later ends the affair, and through her neighbor begins to meet people involved in the Black Panther Party. Brown describes her experiences in developing a black consciousness, and later, a
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
consciousness. She is subjected to a great deal of sexism in the party as well as her own personal obstacles when becoming head of the party from 1974 to 1977. During the black power movement, many men were angered by having to report to Elaine Brown because she was a woman. Her daughter, Ericka Abrams, recounts a memory of when Brown pulled a rifle on heavily armed members of the Black Panther Party. Some men believed that having a woman in charge undermined the objective of the movement. Men desired for the women to do more of the subordinate duties. The book also covers her two runs for councilwoman in Oakland. There is a large amount of writing on friend, lover, and fellow Panther
Huey P. Newton Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966. Under Newton's leadershi ...
, including information on his theory of "revolutionary inter-communalism," in which he foresaw the weakening of the nation-state under the power of the market economy. Huey P. Newton is the one who appointed Elaine Brown as Black Panther Party Chairman when he fled to Cuba. She was chairman from 1974 to 1977, and left after her experiences with sexism within the Black Panthers. She also left because many of her comrades were put into prison or assassinated. In the book review,
Review: New Memoirs on the Black Panther Party
'' by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz. Elaine Brown's memoir was dissected. It was ridiculed by another former black panther leader, Kathleen Cleaver, who said Elaine's perception of the Black Panther Party was negative and unrepresentative of the Party's nature. Brown, however, spoke of her memoir as being the story of the black woman's perspective within the Black Panther Party. Brown was capturing her own experience within the Black Panther Party, not attempting to capture their full essence. ''A Taste of Power'' was optioned in January, 2007 by HBO to use in its six-part series, "The Black Panthers."


References


External links


African American Review
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taste of Power, A 1992 non-fiction books American autobiographies Books about the San Francisco Bay Area Politics of the San Francisco Bay Area Pantheon Books books