On resistance...

Beginning today and over the next several weeks, we’ll share some ideas about the themes in Assata: An Autobiography—themes of resistance, radicalization, and revolution.

Assata: An Autobiography opens with the theme of resistance front and center. She begins her story with the shooting on the New Jersey State Turnpike and the events that followed—her immediate incarceration in the hospital due to the injuries she received during the shootout. She describes the brutal verbal and physical abuse she endured at the hands of the cops who guarded her room. While hospitalized, Assata tells of how she confronted this abuse by reading aloud two works of poetry she had been given by two Black nurses who were kind to her. She writes,

“The books were a godsend. They had been carefully selected. One was a book of Black poetry, one was a book called Black Women in Amerika, and the third was a novel, Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. Whenever i tired of the verbal abuse of my captors, i would drown them out by reading the poetry out loud. “Invictus” and “If We Must Die” were the poems i usually read. I read them over and over, until i was sure the guards heard every word. The poems were my message to them.”

Here, Assata describes how these poems became tools to fuel her resistance—in an immediate sense, resistance to her abuse and resistance to her captivity—but in a much broader sense, her ongoing resistance to the oppression she had faced and would continue to face. Below are Invictus and If We Must Die.

Invictus by William Ernest Henry

Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.

If We Must Die by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Each of these works are stories of resistance of their own. William Ernest Henry wrote Invictus while hospitalized following the amputation of his left leg after a lifetime of pain resulting from tuberculosis of the bone. Claude McKay wrote If We Must Die as a direct response to the racist violence he and others experienced in the early part of the twentieth century in New York City.

After writing about how these poems and the other books she was given gave her strength and helped her heal, Assata closes the first chapter of her autobiography with her own short poem.

STORY

You died. I cried. 
And kept on getting up. 
A little slower. 
And a lot more deadly. 

As we continue to explore the themes in Assata: An Autobiography, we invite you to share with us written works that have fueled your own resistance. Reply here and share the poems, song lyrics, or passages from books that you return to as inspirations to continue resisting. We hope this can be a place where our individual sources of inspiration become our collective fuel to continue the resistance we need to bring about the world we wish to see.