I’m not even sure what brought this book by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele to my attention. I know a lot of people have been adding books like this to their TBR to educate themselves on the current state of race relations in this country, but I haven’t felt any particular need to do that. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me review books similar to this (both fiction and non-fiction) on a semi-regular basis. I see no need to up my reading of this particular kind of book just because all the other white people are just now waking up. If anything, I could really go for some comfort reading in the form of a rom-com right about now (yes, that will be my next review how did you guess?)
Despite the fact that I feel no particular need to dive into these types of books right now, I guess I have been feeling some peer pressure to read what everyone else is reading. And like I said, I do tend to read them on occasion anyway, so when this popped up on my Overdrive, I went ahead and requested it.
It’s really good. Its subtitle is “A Black Lives Matter Memoir” and it really is a memoir of Khan-Cullors’s life. She’s one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, but the book covers her childhood and family history, including the way black people (and especially black women) have consistently been made to carry the responsibility for everything in their lives without any regard for the impact society has on the choices that are made available to them.
Khan-Cullors’s mom was disowned by her parents when she got pregnant as a teenager. Khan-Cullors’s father was an addict who was working his way through the 12-step program. He would bring her to meetings with him, where Khan-Cullors learned about the program and its emphasis on personal responsibility.
Khan-Cullors discusses everything from the way her brothers were treated by the police almost as soon as they turned 12 (the same age Tamir Rice when he was fatally shot by a cop), to what it felt like to witness the killings of black boys like Rice, Brown, and Martin, whose killers all went free.
Hearing Khan-Cullors describe the way the criminal “justice” system treated her brother with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia was especially painful. I have a family friend with a similar diagnosis and I can’t imagine how awful I would feel if he had been treated like that.
This book was written before there were country-wide cries to defund the police, but reading about how Khan-Cullors’s brother was treated by the police and prison guards definitely made me want to tear it all down. She also talks about visiting Ferguson right after Michael Brown was killed – how it was like entering a war zone, and marveling at all the expensive riot gear that cost so much more than what it would cost to invest in the community so it could thrive.
Before I started listening to this audiobook, I had not actually realized that Khan-Cullors was a co-organizer of the Black Lives Matter movement. I had not realized it was organized at all. I thought it had just sprung up on its own because I’m an idiot.
I also had not realized that the movement was founded, not only by black women, but by black queer women. I also admit I have been guilty of not questioning the history that talks about the men of the civil rights movement without hardly ever mentioning the women (Rosa Parks being the one exception). I’ll try to be on the lookout from now on for the women who are, not only marching alongside the men, but doing all or most of the organizing and promoting ahead of time.