Assata: An Autobiography (Lawrence Hill & Co.)

Book Description

This presents the life story of African American revolutionary Shakur, previously known as JoAnne Chesimard.

Customer Reviews:

If you are into racism, women issues and simple reading, this book if for you!.......2007-03-23

This is by far the best autobiography I have read so far. It was an easy read and extremely expressive. In many ways it is disturbing if you think of what the character goes through. The explicit racism, abuse, pain that Assata had to endure is decribed really well. You get to in fact life in her era, in her life when you read this book. I literally could not put it down and read it in 2 days.

It pretty much gives you and idea of how things were in the 70's, what black people went through especially women, what the black panther party was really all about, the dirty system we call law, explicit racial comments and treatment etc. If you like stuff like that, then you'll love this book.

Eyes opening..........2007-01-10

Wow...When you read this book you feel in another era , in another world but the sad part is that is not, it is our world and what hapened to this woman was real.I recommended to everyone regarding your ethnic gropu, but specially to blacks and whites in this country.

An Essential Read.......2006-06-24

The real history of the Black Power Movement will seemingly never be truthfully covered by mainstream historians.

But that doesn't mean the misconceptions and dirty lies should be repeated time and again to those interested in the ongoing struggles by persons of color. You know the drill; when it's said a topic/person is not important or much too radical then it simply is a footnote to history.

And Assata: An Autobiography is a great point to start that sojourn or to continue gaining knowledge from a person passionately involved in the revolution.

Assata Shakur's message cannot be read as simply an historical piece that has no relevance today. By doing so, the reader will miss the bigger picture that Shakur presents. The times change, but the struggle continues.

WOW.......2006-05-16

The story of Assata Shakur is deep and motivating, after reading the story of her journey I was surprised at the amount of people that had no clue of her story. This book is a great read for everyone, this book will make you think and want to learn so much more. I am so happy that she was able to tell her story.

Must read!.......2006-02-01

The book was great. I felt like using a highlighter during numerous points in the book.

"The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free you have to acutely aware of being a slave."

this quote meant a lot to me. Its so true that many of us (including me) have become so passive in the treatment we are subjected to. We must constantly remind ourselves of the injustices because "this" is not normal.

Assata dropped numerous names I was unfamilar w/ so I made a list and I am going down it little by little and getting some background.

There is so much we all dont know. And of course if we rely on "America" to enlighten us we will be clueless for the rest of our lives. And seriously I closed the book numerous times just to think. There is so much to be done and if we could all come together to organize so much progress could be made.

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A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY!
This Is Our History
Powerful
Wonderful book
Don't get it twisted - A Powerful Book

Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Angela Y. Davis
Manufacturer: International Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0717806677

Customer Reviews:

A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY!.......2007-05-13

TRUE revolution is God's gift to the process and pundits of progressive spiritual evolution. If such a creation as heaven on Earth could truly exist, what illusions about our religions, societies, and even selves [i.e. covert cultural contaminations (for effectively deflecting proper perception, and God-inspired spiritual evaluation)] would we all have to eventually unlearn? The evolution of TRUE revolution will eventually lead humanity forward into its' Creator [Father, Son (Christ Jesus or Yeshua), and Holy Spirit for myself]; where the knowledge of self (I and I) will be embraced by the knowledge of self (I and I). TRUE revolution as TRUE knowledge of self can only be granted by the expansively implosive subtleties that many of us refer to as God (Allah, etc.). The TRUE question is, "What in this world was designed deliberately for the purpose of diverting our collective attention away from the supplementals of those supreme subtleties?

I would love to meet Ms. Angela Davis (as I'm sure you would, or even have) simply to sit, listen, learn, and say "Thank You!" Thank you for making your stand in the evolution of TRUE revolution. TRUE revolutionary sacrifice of oneself comes from the God-source within oneself, extending unto the God-potential about everyone else, only to rediscover (through connecting with the God-potential about everyone else) a further extention of the God-source within oneself (i.e., I and I). The Autobiography of Angela Davis I highly recommend. 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection ANDFrom the Browder File: 22 Essays on the African American Experience (From the Browder File Series) (From the Browder File Series) AND young skin/Wise Mind/OLD SOUL

This Is Our History.......2006-10-02

The political autobiography was published in 1974 by Random House and reissued in 1988 and 2004.

The book is built around Davis evading police, but finally being captured in New York City and being charged with three capital offenses due to her alleged participation in an escape attempt at the Marin County Hall of Justice.

Davis then weaves her story through her 16 months in jail while awaiting trial, a world-wide campaign calling for her release and her acquittal of all charges in 1972.

It is a treasure of information from one of the most high-profile members of the revolutionary movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Davis was shaped by her travels to Cuba and concluded democracy and socialism are more compatible for freedom of the working class than democracy and capitalism.

The book does not include new material. I would be very interested in an additional chapter on when Davis and others broke from the Communist Party USA during a tumultuous meeting in Cleveland, OH, in the early 1990s.

Only the most rabid revisionist of 1960s-1970s political turmoil would not give her the place she rightfully deserves when discussing that era.

The book remains an unrepentant statement against government-backed repression, and the work by one person to bring these issues to the forefront of the consciousness of all people.

Powerful.......2005-12-17

I've met Angela Y. Davis since I currently attend UCSC where she is a professor of History of Consciousness. While I do applaud her for being an intelligent, sophisticated, and strong woman I must say this book tends to rub me the wrong way at times. What appears to be my reasoning towards being critical is how there are moments when it is obvious that Ms. Davis gets prejudicial towards people that "wronged" her. This is not to say that they are entirely innocent but some people who read this autobiography do interpret it as prejudicial towards one race. I am not here to say that all white people are goody two shoes but there are plenty of those from European descent that are nurturing and loving people. Certainly Ms. Davis would not appreciate it if someone called her a racial slur or categorized all African Americans or Marxists as radical and violent. This is why I just cannot rank this book of hers 5 out of 5 stars. She is a wonderful storyteller and very engaging in her speeches but, with all people, she does need to strive for improvement in some areas.

Wonderful book.......2004-07-31

Angela Davis is such a good storyteller, and the book was very easy read. I loved the style it was written in.
I wasn't exactly a communist, when I read the book, and I still am not.
My old women's libber teacher from college would probably be surprised, if she found out, I liked this book.
I loved the story about Angela Davis as a young woman walking into a shoe shop in the South together with a friend and they address the shop assistants in French.
The assistants are thrilled; they thinks Angela Davis and her friend are from a French-speaking Caribbean Island and they swarm round the two young women.
This tells me, that most whites were victims of these mad racial conventions too.
They felt great relief and joy in getting a chance to treat these two black girls like they were princesses, but the harsh reality surfaced, when Angela Davis and her friend revealed to them, they were black American girls.
You can't help feel sorry for the shop assistants.
At least they got a glimpse of Paradise.

Don't get it twisted - A Powerful Book.......2004-01-29

First off, for anyone who finds this book dry or boring, understand one thing: this is not pop fiction. You're not going to get neat drawn-out analogies that compares human struggle to a football game or any such nonsense. It's a very intelligent, articulate book that doesn't try to dumb down its message for the uninitiated. But it's also not rocket science. Read it with an open mind and any knowledge you may have of the 60's and 70's and you'll do just fine.

What is often misunderstood is that Ms. Davis did not like the idea of a 'personal' autobiography and was very reluctant to do the book in the first place. She didn't see herself as so special or disconnected in any way from the lives of the millions of struggling people that she and her struggle sought to better. So, she wrote a 'political' autobiography. Every facet of her own life that she chose to share with us is tied in some way to that struggle to bring dignity to the masses of human beings exploited throughout the world. What you walk away with after reading this book is how much she really does care the lives of people. It's not just a bunch of abstract ideas, neat theories, or some trivial intellectual excercise. It really is life and death issues. And she fought for the lives of many as if she would fight for her own.

I think the most important thing you walk away with, and what she wants you to walk away with, is a clear and powerful demonstration of just how much people can bring about real change when we work together collectively in mass and fight for what we believe is right. Time and time again, victory after victory, against what some would consider insurmountable odds, the will of the people were heard. Not because they elected some noble politician who changed it from within. And not because of the kindness of those in power. But because thousands of everyday people like you and me took to the streets and DEMANDED that obvious wrongs be made right. Anyone who takes for granted the 5-day work week, child labor laws, civil rights, humane working conditions, fair and equal compensation, should not take lightly the efforts of people throughout history like Ms. Angela Davis. We benefit from all those things because people got in the street, fought and died for those things. Check your history.

The bottom line is if you are looking for 'light' entertainment reading, you might not find it in this book. But, if you are politicially minded or even curious about the social environment of the 60's, this is a must read. If you care about the plight of black people and opressed people everywhere, get this book. If all you've ever known about revolution, black power struggle, and those damn communists is what you've read about in school or in the papers and you KNOW they're not telling the full story, get this book. Finally, if you know how messed up things are in this country but don't know what to do about it, your life will be changed by this book.

Book Description

Born in 1924, Anne McCarty Braden is a southern white woman who broke from her segregationist upbringing to become a lifelong civil rights activist in the late 1940s. Unlike many southern reformers of her generation, Braden refused to become an exile fro either her region or her race, and instead sought to awaken the consciences of white southerners to the reality of racial injustice in the South and in America. Hailed as a courageous heroine and a role model by her colleagues in the nascent civil rights movement of the 1950s, Braden was simultaneously accused of being a Communist and a seditionist by her neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky and by southern politicians that rallied around the anti-Communist movement of the period. Catherine Fosl not only shares the extraordinary life of Braden, but also offers a valuable history of the struggles that white southern activists faced in the segregated, cold war South.

Customer Reviews:

'Subversive Southerner' is a must-read.......2003-07-17

'Subversive Southerner' is a must-read for anyone interested in southern history or in the social and cultural upheavals of the 50s and 60s. It's a riveting story of personal transformation and courage in the face of unrelenting persecution by authorities, and a reminder of how fragile and how precious are our civil liberties. Anne Braden is a heroine-- dedicated, single-minded in her pursuit of civil rights, but compassionate and always interested in individuals. There's plenty of bombings, arrests, and HUAC subpoenas to keep you turning pages,and lots of quotes, oral-history style, from major figures from the 50s and 60s. It's well-written--Fosl is an expert interviewer and very good writer.

Anne Braden: A True American Hero.......2002-12-27

Anne Braden courageously opposed the Dixie segregationist establishment. She was born Anne McCarty in 1924 in "Louisville where white folks lived." Her earlier concerns were conventional and non threatening to the social mores of her Jim Crow society. Anne mostly worried about being attractive to boys during her high school years and was even willing to play dumb so as not to alienate them. She underwent a dramatic change in her early adult years while attending college and earning a living as a journalist. The Southern newspapers of that era barely considered a murdered black person worthy of mention. Blacks could fight and die in our wars, but were refused entrance to the voting booth. White criminals were afforded more respect than virtuous and law abiding Afro-Americans. The usual definition of a liberal Southern politician was someone who dared speak out against lynching while remaining firmly loyal to the principle of segregation. Anne ultimately could not make peace with the prevailing zeitgeist. She marries Carl Braden, a man named after Karl Marx. The Bradens soon partner with such luminaries like James Dombrowski, Bob Zellner and Martin Luther King. The latter remarked upon her dedication in his famous "Letter From a Birmingham Jail." Heroic self sacrifice and the constant risk of violence became an everyday reality. The odds were probably no better than fifty-fifty that the Bradens could escape being murdered.

What does the Cold War have to with Anne Braden? Why did the author choose the title "Subversive Southerner?" Catherine Fosl points out the insane eagerness of the segregationists to brand those advocating civil rights as traitors to the United States. In their peculiar way of looking at the world, combatting Jim Crow was the same thing as aligning oneself with our nation's enemies. The Bradens, however, did flirt with Communism and this made it easier for their foes to justify harassing them. A number of prosecutors seeking political power relished the opportunity to put them behind bars for alleged acts of sedition. Anne's relationship with avowed Communists extends to the point where the well known radical Angela Davis even writes the forward for this book. Should we therefore condemn her? Not in the least. Fosl presents a persuasively well put together argument that Anne Braden deserves to be cut some slack. There is no evidence whatsoever hinting that the still living Ms. Braden ever adhered to any orthodox interpretation of Communist doctrine. She seems naively oblivious to the logical consequences of these horrifying set of beliefs. Sadly, mainstream political conservatives did virtually nothing to combat racism in the Old South. Anne Braden was therefore compelled to cooperate with those willing to fight along side of her. She and her late husband were primarily activists and not armchair philosophers. One also does not have to agree with all of Anne Braden's more recent political proposals. Some of these efforts might indeed leave something to be desired. That is beside the point. Ms. Braden definitely has done far more good than inadvertent harm. Catherine Fosl is to be congratulated for making sure that Americans don't overlook her enormous accomplishments. It would be shameful not to honor Anne Braden while she is still alive. I strongly urge you to read this superb biography of one of our greatest American heroes.

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

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You would think our own would know the score.
Poetics ARE Politics for many people. No exceptions here.
Breaking ground
A wonderful analysis of Strange Fruit and Billie Holiday
Permission and Intent

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
Angela Y. Davis
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 067945005X
Release Date: 1998-01-20

Amazon.com

The female blues singers of the 1920s, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and Bessie Smith, not only invented a musical genre, but they also became models of how African American women could become economically independent in a culture that had not previously allowed it. Both Smith and Rainey composed, arranged, and managed their own road bands. Angela Y. Davis's study emphasizes the impact that these singers, and later Billie Holiday, had on the poor and working-class communities from which they came. The artists addressed radical subjects such as physical and economic abuse, race relations, and female sexual power, including lesbianism. Ma Rainey was well known as a lover of women as well as men, and her song "Prove It on Me" describes a butch woman who dresses like a man and dates women. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism places the fluid sexuality of these women within a larger context of African American artists' attempts to subvert and recreate America.

Customer Reviews:

You would think our own would know the score. .......2006-01-31

No one with a true understanding of Billie Holiday would consider her a Blues Singer. As such to truly study Blues Legacies, it would be better if a Blues singer like Memphis Minnie, one of the greatest female instrumental blues singers, were included. Surely, Dinah Washington, justifiably named the Queen of the Blues, or Ruth Brown, (Miss or maybe now Ms Rhythm) would be more appropriate to a study of Black blues women.

This hints that the generalizations in this book may be the result of pushing around reality rather than studying it. This is an all too frequent problem in the writing of academics who seem more concerned about creating their own little niche of analysis, than situating their work in the realities of life, culture, and art where the blues or Jazz, and Billie's real life live.

Billie did not like to be called a Blues Singer. If we are concerned with the voices of Black women, then someone involved in this book should have at least had the respect to listen to Billie Holiday's voice on the matter. She considered herself a Jazz singer and later a cabaret singer.

She recorded very few blues. The two blues she recorded again and again "Billie's Blues" and "Fine and Mellow" were only recorded because in two different recording sessions there was time to record additional songs, but no preparation or charts existed for any song, so an easy to play blues was selected. Billie recorded them and performed these two tunes often because she had the author's credit and publishing on them which made it easier and more profitable. This is despite the fact that the exact word sets had been sung and recorded by real blues singers before Billie had the brains to record AND copyright them. Listen to Helen Humes sing an exact version of Fine and Mellow with another name during the first Spirituals to Swing concert that took place BEFORE Billie recorded her version.

A good contrast with Billie, though male, was her friend and often colleague Jimmie Rushing who served with her in the Basie Band. Despite his penchant for claiming he was a ballad singer as well--Rushing actually thought that when Billie left Basie that rather than hiring another singer, he alone could fill the gap--Rushing's recordings with Walter Page's Blue Devils in the 1920s, with Moten in the early 1930s, and with Basie in the 1930s and 1940s are masterpieces of the blues. Many of his renditions like Good Morning Blues have become standards for blusicians of all stripes. Lesser known but deserving more attention are his great blues recorded with KC musicians for John Hammond on Vanguard in the 1960s.

Otherwise she recorded few blues, particularly in her most artistically developed period between 1934 and 1945. Indeed, Billie's lack of a blues repertoire and disinclination to perform blues cost her her position as female vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra, a match made in heaven. While there were no doubt other factors involved, many Basieites especially Buck Clayton who was quite close to Billy have said Billie was replaced because she didn't perform enough blues to suit John Hammond who acted as de facto manager and AR man with the Basie band. Hammond replaced Billie Holiday with Helen Humes who had been recording blues for ten years before she joined Basie. Humes, of course, continued to record Blues with Basie, and then as an independent singer from then until her death keeping her magnificent jump blues alive for several generations of listeners. Clayton's complaint is a standard one leveled at white Jazz producers like Hammond and Norman Grantz that they wanted blues, not more harmonically developed music that Black Jazz musicians really wanted to play.

The blues is a specific genre of African American musical, poetic, and cultural expression with its own distinct history, evolution, and practices. Simply collapsing every Black performer into the Blues makes the blues meaningless and demeans the work of the millions of women and men who have created the blues in the last 110-120 years.

Another insult to Billie, is the tendency to see her as a "blues figure" because of her "tragic" life. This is the tendency to evaluate Billie as the public life disaster that she tended to milk in desperation in the last years of her life symbolized by the fake autobiography _Lady Sings the Blues_. This contrasts than the artistic consideration she deserved and received from other musicians and singers. She was a competent and practicing jazz artist, raised in the music business (her father complained he played guitar for every jazz artist in NYC in the 1930s and early 1940s but Billie. Her mother boarded musicians and catered musical parties). From a young age, Billie was considered as knowledgeable as the top instrumentalists of the music by those top instrumentalists.

Those who rely on the "tragedy" to induct Billie into the Blues express a greater ignorance given that as her own drug addiction advanced, her music had less and less of a connection with the blues, climaxing in "The Lady in Satin" which is a vain attempt to take The Lady into non-Jazz pop. All of her original blues were recorded in her pre-heroin youth in the 1930s, not in the 1950s when Billie's self-made "tragedy" had begun to destroy her voice and musicial viability and then her life.

It is quite bizarre for anyone to claim Billie's performance of Meeropol's song "Strange Fruit," has any relationship to blues music given her very straight reading of the tune, the unblueslike straight minor it is given, and the unjazzlike accompaniment. If one wants to see what a Blues Singer can do to this song, one needs to listen to the astounding version recorded by Josh White which is blusey and also more dramatic and satisfying than Holiday's more celebrated version. Holiday's performance of "Strange Fruit," tends to be elevated by folks for the justifiable political message the song provided and the controversy involved. However, an honest or even rational evaluation of the performance seems to be unavailable these days.

This raises yet another ignorance, the outsider's view that "The Blues" is always sad or "tragic." The immense body of the most popular blusicians--that is blues artists that Black people listened to-- of the 1930s like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, and Leroy Carr served up a bunch of pretty happy, often double entendre, blues. Blues music was overwhelmingly dance music, with performers not playing the three minute blues contemporary white blues wannabe's deduce from recordings, but 10 to even 30 minute versions of their songs for dancers from Juke Joints to the big ballrooms. Unfortunately, people who have never studied the blues as a real genre, misplace it as the solo moaning of the "existential Negro," rather than the jumping music of a century of African American Saturday nights.

As an African American performer of the blues and other Black traditional musics as well as a scholar of African American music tradition, this kind of non scientific, non-traditional, grab bag sloppiness about our music and our culture is a sign that even among our own, the outsider's false generalizations about the blues reign. You would think our own would know the score.

Poetics ARE Politics for many people. No exceptions here........2004-08-19

Davis work is a powerful re-reading of Blues women, and firmly places them in the center, rather than the margin, of Black oppositional and autonomous culture discourse. The book is mostly devoted to the work of Gertrude Rainey and Bessie Smith, but there are important sections devoted to Billie Holiday as well. In each case, the Davis argues for a more complete contextual understanding of Blues women music as introducing gender issues, breaking discursive taboos, and forging meaning within the context of an imagined community of Black women's lives.

To begin with, Davis convincingly argues that Blues women were on the vanguard in breaking down taboos concerning domestic violence and male subjugation, as many Blues songs concerned these matters. Davis uses powerful works such as "Rough and Tumble Blues," "See See Rider Blues," and "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair," to demonstrate that Blues women were willing to engage in oppositional, if allegorical, violence in the service of personal autonomy. Even man songs that seem to demonstrate acquiescence, even masochism, in the face of male abuse can be seen to have an ironic, subversive, or didactic quality that belies a simplistic surface reading.

Davis also takes on the common notion that Blues music doesn't include social protest, an interpretation that has been pushed by white commentators, such as Samuel Charters, and black commentators, such as Albert Murray. Davis argues that Blues music inherits from Slave musical culture a coded approach to naming and resistance that demands more than a surface analysis of the lyrics, and takes into account the role of music as a lyrical interlocuter. Focusing on tunes such as "Backwater Blues" and "Washwoman's Blues," Davis almost always effectively demonstrates that coded protest is still protest, and that women's blues historically anticipated and grounded mass movements in the areas of civil rights and feminism, while remaining linked with West African hermeneutic structure of naming and interpretation, such as "nommo."

In terms of Religious content, Davis forcefully recounts how women reconfigured a secular existential (or even "Devil's") music as prayer itself, magically and aesthetically conjured to exorcise emotions such as "the blues." At the same time, she harshly criticizes the Black church for adopting Christian dualisms concerning the moral status of body and spirit, which she sees as sexualized forms of racism and sexism--- since both blacks and women have been semiotically linked with earthiness and body as opposed to spirit by while male elites. Celebratory Sexuality, on the other hand, has always, according to Davis, been an oppositional aspect of black working-class consciousness. This extends beyond sexuality to an affirmation of Black folk religious life (such as Hoodoo) and crossing of class boundaries in the Blues, which Davis contends is a major reason Blues music was ignored and even distanced by Black elites during the Harlem Renaissance.

Davis's discussion of Billie Holiday is short (two chapters) but powerful, in which she argues that Holiday subversively appropriated the saccharine Tin Pan Alley love song format she was given as Slaves would have appropriated the English language upon their arrival in the North Americas. Holiday worked little in the formal Blues, but was nontheless grounded in the Blues idiom, from which she drew inspiration, and a subversive presentation of white romantic life to Black audiences. In this vein, such songs as "Strange Fruit" fit more coherently, and the ironic (and yet utopian) edge in her voice professes to the truth of Black women's lives, even in ways that on the surface seem to be feministically regressive.

There are isolated examples where Davis is less successful than at other times, but on the whole, her argumentation is strong and fearless, and her analogical and narrative analysis of the music along with lyrics adds, rather than detracts, from her argument.

Breaking ground.......2000-07-26

I have to agree with the reviewer from Turkey who wrote positively about Davis' "Strange Fruit" chapter in Blues Legacies. I recently wrote a term paper on the song Strange Fruit in which I referred to both David Margolick's recent release about Strange Fruit and Davis' Blues Legacies. I was very impressed with Davis' depiction of Holiday as an individual and an entertainer. It seemed that she brought a more well-rounded and objective perspective on the singer into the world of Billie Holiday biographies. Her take on the song and on Holiday's connection to it are, shall we say, refreshing, in that it takes a novel approach to the singer -- one that attempts to remain impartial to the popular image of Holiday. This book is also an excellent reference for those studying feminism, jazz, Afro-Americana and/or the lives of the three women (Rainey, Holiday and Smith) showcased in Davis' Blues Legacies.

A wonderful analysis of Strange Fruit and Billie Holiday.......2000-03-28

If you expect to read a traditional biography you may be dissappointed. The lives of the blues women and their political messages behind their songs are discussed in one another's light. This works very well as blues is a folk music which tells many things about the black experience and most singers are song writers themselves. The section about Billie Holiday and her song Strange Fruit is one of the rare approaches to Lady Day as an artist who gave a very important political messages about racism. In other biographies Billie Holiday is always portrayed as a victim rather than a person who had an important political message. I believe this very style of her portrayal could be discussed in a feminist context and that's what Angela Davies did in this book with her vast knowledge and experience in black politics and gender issues. Some people criticize the book for being overtly political. However, I see no other way of analyzing the blues without its political context. The transcriptions of the songs also gives a documentary value to this book. It has been a great reference for my research in this field. I wish I can get in touch with Angela Davies one day and discuss her about the research she has done while preparing this book.

Permission and Intent.......2000-03-07

Davis' title explains her project in clear terms at the outset. She is not engaged in a critique of modern women in popular music (as one reviewer anticipated). Nor is she profiling these women in biography format. Therefore, she does not need the permission of Rainey's relatives for this project. Her goal is to uncover the pre-feminist sentiments expressed in these women's music. In that regard, she needs only the barest biographical information (that women performers were not rooted to hearth and home, traveled, worked, and had marquee positions). Assuming this general information to be true of all these women, Davis then concentrates her primary energy on the legacy that blues lyrics leave for Black Feminism. Part of that legacy is found in the advice on romance, religion, and race that these women's songs shared (or share now) with black female listeners. I hope this gives readers an accurate idea of what to expect from this worthwhile book and encourages disappointed readers to re-encounter the book on its own terms.

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Angela Davis An Autobiography -
Angela Davis -
Manufacturer: Random House Publishing -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OM8IIK

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ANGELA DAVIS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GQ83KW

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An Autobiography
Angela Davis
Manufacturer: Women's Press Ltd,The
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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With My Mind On Freedom - An Autobiography

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With My Mind On Freedom - An Autobiography
Angela Davis
Manufacturer: Bantham
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000PB21BA

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Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Angela Davis
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000J49GK2

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Angela Davis: Civil Rights Leader

Manufacturer: Chelsea House Pub (L)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0791018709

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