Rather Be Reading

“So I came to believe that if I could be white, or as white as my color permitted, I could be elevated from the degradation of being a ‘nigger.’ I trained myself to talk like white people, to act like white people, to walk and dress like white people. I made every effort possible to belong to white people.”

I’d rather be reading A Taste of Power, A Black Woman’s Story by Elaine Brown than cleaning up my apartment.

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story is a memoir that follows Elaine Brown’s life through from childhood up through her activism with the Black Panther Party. In her earlier years, due to her mother’s persistence, she attended a predominantly white school and becomes friends with Jewish girls. It was there that she understood what it was like to be black, female, and poor in America. She also describes being part of two different worlds. She'd act "white" while hanging out with her school friends, and "black" when with the girls in her neighborhood.

Brown depicts her political awakening during the bohemian years of her adolescence, and her time as a foot soldier for the Panthers, who seemed to hold the promise of redemption. She describes her experiences in developing a black consciousness, and later, a feminist consciousness.

And she tells of her ascent into the upper echelons of Panther leadership: her tumultuous relationship with the charismatic Huey Newton, who would become her lover and her nemesis; her experience with the male power rituals that would sow the seeds of the party’s demise; and the scars that she both suffered and inflicted in that era’s paradigm-shifting clashes of sex and power.

Ironic that a little girl who purposefully morphed her identity into that of her white counterparts would go on to be a leader in the Black Panther Party. Not only did I learn more about the party’s conception and all that they truly stood for, I also received an in-depth look at race and gender separation of the 60s and 70s. One might think that black men and women could exist on the same playing field within the faction; one would be wrong. Which is what made Brown’s position in the party and accomplishment, an honor, and a curse.

I could relate to Brown’s early identity crisis, and even relate to developing my black consciousness, but the type of love that she shared with Huey Newton – the Black Panther Party’s co-founder – is one that I’ve never known and a huge piece in the puzzle of her life.

An easy read, that illuminates a tumultuous time in African American history and personifies a feminist movement in one of the most macho parties in history.