Toward Liberation Summer Read - Assata: An Autobiography

Our exploration begins here.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to win.

We must love each other and support each other.

We have nothing to lose but our chains.” –Assata Shakur

Toward Liberation begins our exploration of the written word with our first summer reading selection, Assata: An Autobiography.

Assata was written in 1988 by Shakur from Cuba, where she has political asylum. Her story begins in 1973 with the shooting on the New Jersey State Turnpike. It goes on to tell of her upbringing, the origins of her radicalization, and her time as a leading member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Power Movement.

Assata: An Autobiography is the most fitting selection for the Toward Liberation summer read because it is a story of radicalization and revolution in every way that those words convey a necessary and deliberative process in moving toward liberation—liberation for oneself and liberation for others.

Read Alan and connease’s thoughts on Assata: An Autobiography.

From Alan:
The Toward Liberation summer read grew from an idea that began with the Dean’s Social Justice Summer Reading Series, an initiative I began in 2016 while Dean of the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. Each summer, I selected a book and invited incoming students, as well as our broader community, to read together. The hope of each year’s summer reading selection was to spark the conversations necessary to bring about real and lasting change toward our vision of achieving racial justice.

Yet as I grew in my abolitionist journey—and the books selected featured a more explicitly abolitionist perspective—resistance began to grow. In summer 2022, I chose Dorothy Roberts’ Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, and was told by faculty that, for the first time, this book would not be required reading for our incoming students due to “student’s varying familiarities with the framework of abolition and systems change.”

Later that year, in December 2022, I was removed from my position as Dean due to the university’s concerns about the abolitionist direction I was taking the college. As a result, the Dean’s Social Justice Summer Reading Series was no more.

Yet this was the spark that created Toward Liberation. Though I am no longer Dean, this does not mean we can’t still read together and grow as a community committed to justice and liberation.

I knew immediately that our first book would be Assata’s autobiography because of its ideas on resistance, radicalization, and revolution—ideas that our liberation depends on. But also I knew this would be our first selection as this book would never have been allowed if I was still Dean.  

At the end of my first year as dean in the fall of 2016, we released a new strategic plan that would lead us through the next five years. The print and electronic versions of the plan featured images of social justice inspirations from our past and present, along with quotes from each of them. One of these inspirations was Assata Shakur, along with her quote, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Shortly after the strategic plan was published, I received a call from the University Provost asking me if I knew there was a picture of someone from the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list on the cover of our strategic plan. I said that I did and attempted to provide the larger story. However, I was told that the image must be immediately removed, and I would no longer be allowed to include any reference to Assata Shakur in any college materials moving forward. 

At this time in my career, I had yet to begin my abolitionist journey and had little understanding of what I hoped to accomplish as Dean, so I thoughtlessly complied with this demand. This may not be the decision I would have made in my later years as Dean, but it was the decision I made then, and it is the decision I have most regretted.

When I was Dean, I didn’t always fully understand the chains I willingly accepted. But now that I am free of those chains, I will not be held by them again. Assata: An Autobiography is the inaugural Toward Liberation summer reading selection. I hope everyone who previously joined the Dean’s Summer Reading Series will continue to read with me, free of the constraints previously placed on us by a harmful institution. This is part of our journey toward liberation, and I’m grateful to be on this journey with you.

From connease:

In this year, when hip hop turns 50, as do I, it’s rather poetic that hip hop provided my first introduction to Assata Shakur.

The year was 1987.

The album, It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

The song, Rebel Without A Pause was the anthem of inner city teenagers who had come of age during the Reagan era fully attuned to the rapid expansion of state violence and devastation of our neighborhoods. When Chuck D bellowed, “Hard — my calling card/Recorded and ordered, supporter of Chesimard…” I had to know who he was talking about. We didn’t have google but among friends we shared the information we uncovered in hip hop lyrics with urgency. At that time much of hip hop was infused with radical ideas and figures, providing an education and articulating the righteous indignation we felt as crack flooded our neighborhoods, as family members and friends were hauled off to jail even though most were slanging just enough to get by and even the flashiest dope boys didn’t own planes. I can’t remember who told me that Chesimard referred to Assata Shakur by her slave name, JoAnne Chesimard, but I quickly learned as much as I could and eventually read Assata: An Autobiography.

Ever since, Assata has loomed large in my imagination as a legend of strength and uncompromising defiance. Her story validated my own feelings about the deep inequality and rampant injustice I saw all around me. Her words reassured me I wasn’t crazy, or alone. And she provided an example of what it means to stand tall, strong, and true in the face of oppression.

I am excited to read Assata: An Autobiography again together in community. Her story is worthy of not only knowing but of revisiting again and again, until we are free. May her words provide sustenance for the journey we must undertake. As she writes in Assata, “The only ones who can free us are ourselves.”