Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Y. Davis

5 reviews

waybeyondblue's review

Go to review page

challenging hopeful informative inspiring tense medium-paced

3.75


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

erebus53's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

notthatcosta's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

redcapediver's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

202claire's review

Go to review page

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...