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A review by civil6512
Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George L. Jackson
5.0
I can't remember how I found out about this book. Maybe it was mentioned in some documentary, or it was referenced by some Wikipedia article I was reading. When I marked it to read, I found that a friend had previously read it, which encouraged me to give it a try.
What a book!
First, I couldn't help hating George Jackson. The way he treated his family in his letters, the way he patronised them, how sexist he was... I was unable to empathise with him, and started thinking these were the reasons he was unable to be paroled out... and that's when it stroke me, that's when I realised how I am part of the system: eager to find reasons not to question the status quo, to find reasons to justify the systemic racism, to find reasons to bend, to fit.
At that point, I kept reading with more passion. What they did with George Jackson is a shame: he was sentenced to one year to life for a $70 armed robbery. He was told that pleading guilty would see him out of prison earlier than trying to argue his case, but instead he was kept incarcerated for 11 years, spending many of them in isolation, until he was finally killed in a riot.
George Jackson educated himself during his time in jail: he studied languages, read about Marxism, Maoism and essentially revolutionary ideology.
Learning about him from his letters is hard, since the reader lacks half of the context. Sometimes they are written after receiving a visit, sometimes they answer other letters, sometimes he's angry, sometimes he's hopeful... In the end, he learns to expect nothing.
I won't attempt to summarise his letters: he talks about politics, oppression, racism, capitalism... And his letters also talk about Martin Luther King and why his nonviolent activism could never work (this he says before MLK is murdered, and repeats afterwards)
The book is available online here: http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html, and I encourage everybody to read it.
What a book!
First, I couldn't help hating George Jackson. The way he treated his family in his letters, the way he patronised them, how sexist he was... I was unable to empathise with him, and started thinking these were the reasons he was unable to be paroled out... and that's when it stroke me, that's when I realised how I am part of the system: eager to find reasons not to question the status quo, to find reasons to justify the systemic racism, to find reasons to bend, to fit.
At that point, I kept reading with more passion. What they did with George Jackson is a shame: he was sentenced to one year to life for a $70 armed robbery. He was told that pleading guilty would see him out of prison earlier than trying to argue his case, but instead he was kept incarcerated for 11 years, spending many of them in isolation, until he was finally killed in a riot.
George Jackson educated himself during his time in jail: he studied languages, read about Marxism, Maoism and essentially revolutionary ideology.
Learning about him from his letters is hard, since the reader lacks half of the context. Sometimes they are written after receiving a visit, sometimes they answer other letters, sometimes he's angry, sometimes he's hopeful... In the end, he learns to expect nothing.
I won't attempt to summarise his letters: he talks about politics, oppression, racism, capitalism... And his letters also talk about Martin Luther King and why his nonviolent activism could never work (this he says before MLK is murdered, and repeats afterwards)
The book is available online here: http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html, and I encourage everybody to read it.