The New Huey P. Newton Reader / Huey P. Newton / 2019

The New Huey P. Newton Reader / Huey P. Newton / 2019

An excellent follow-up to my Fanon reading, this anthology made me laugh harder at The Boondocks scenes etched into my mind when I realized how excellently Aaron McGruder satirized Newton's voice in Huey. Reading this reader filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the Black Freedom Movement and its communist heritage. It introduced me to dialectical materialism and revolutionary intercommunalism, some of the scuffles between Black intellectuals, and gave me a thorough sense of how much of the Black political heritage has been robbed from us by US racist propaganda in our schools. To read that Newton and the Panthers had already wrestled through so much of the common challenges of organizing was a tad frustrating as I realized how useful it would've been to have read this all much earlier. I'm committed to learning more about socialism and communism now, and I am contemplating how the queer and pox socialist heritages have been largely severed by AIDS, crack and the death and displacement of the revolutionary wars in Central America. Some of the latest writings get a little weird or at least become less mind-blowing so I'm landing at a 4.5 out of 5.