Customer Reviews

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am a 20 year old college student and only accidentally came across "A Taste of Power" while looking for the autobiography of the much more recognized Angela Davis. The book was incredible to say the least. Though only a small segment of the book discussed sexism in the party, the message was overwhelming. Male chauvinistic attitudes, to a large extent, destroyed the party. Elaine, though seemingly strong-minded, also struggles with the self-worth issues that are so common amongst black women. She tried hard to fit into the schema of black womanhood that others (whites, her mother, black men) had created for her. She moves quickly through the ranks of the party, experiencing a taste of power, but in the end she wonders if she lost herself. READ IT!

Having a love of black history and women, this book blew me away in the five days I read it. My history project in college this past year, was based on the black panthers. Having to find my information for the project, I read many books, based on the revolutionaty panthers. "A Taste of Power, blew me away, and made me feel proud to be black and a WOMAN!

I read Huey P. Newton's autobiography- Revolutionary Suicide- and Elaine's autobiography really completes the picture of what the Black Panthers were all about. It's pros and pitfalls and most importantly a well- encompassing picture of her struggle as well as the struggle of the Black Panthers. I recommend this book to any and every one. It is really amazing.

A Taste of Power" is the stuff of major motion pictures. When Huey Newton, Defense Minister of the Black Panther Party, jumped bail on murder charges and found asylum in Cuba, he summoned his lover, Elaine Brown, to take charge of the organization that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the greatest threat to our national security. At the very moment Brown believed she was finally free of an increasingly unbearable life at the hands of Newton's dual nature--his passionate and liberating rhetoric accompanied with a bent for brutality--she received from him a chance to seize power too seductive for such an admitted opportunist to abandon.

Brown begins her engaging, at times harrowing, narrative with her childhood as the only offspring of a laborer mother and an absent father, about whom she learns in her teenage years is a prominent physician who uses his political connections to avoid assuming legal responsibility for her. Without apology, she describes her escape from the violent realities of a North Philadelphia ghetto by succeeding crosstown as an A student in a predominantly white private school. On those savage streets of her youth, she came within moments of being gang raped on one occasion, and on another she was senselessly beaten to near unconsciousness by a gang of dissed brothers.

Discontent with her vapid academic life at Temple University, she moved to Los Angeles, where she became the only black waitress at the fabled Pink Pussycat. Before long she was picked up by novelist Jay Kennedy who stopped into the club with the Frank Sinatra entourage. Ironically, it was Kennedy, a white married family man from the East coast, who on the one hand gave her the spoils of the good life that included days in the plush Sinatra compound and weeks in the best Las Vegas hotels, and on the other hand the literature that cultivated in her a sense of direction as a black woman in a racist America she had never quite reckoned with. When her relationship with Kennedy ended, she fell into the Black Panther Party and eventually met and worked closely with all its legendary leaders, including Newton, Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, and Ray Hewitt Masai, the father of her only child and who, according to Brown, was unjustly accused by the FBI of fathering actress Jean Seberg's child.

It is Brown's apparent falling into so many extraordinary lives that may puzzle some readers. While Brown administers an overdose of the who, what, where and when of her life, she does not give enough of the why and how. Perhaps this is because Brown is so busy relating the many riveting moments of her life, which is also the reason that her book is hard to put down. She vividly details her own abuse of thorazine, her poetic persona through which she sees sex, revolution, and power as one, and the frightfully potent level of firepower possessed by the Panthers during their formative years. Her first struggle as leader of the Panthers was to smash the anti-woman barrier that existed within the Party. Until her elevation, women were relegated to cook for and make love to their "warriors."

"A Taste of Power" transcends biography and is at its most disturbing when characterizing the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between blacks and whites in America. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, any notion of nonviolence ended, she writes. She tells of her emotional confrontation with her own roots when describing the moment she first laid eyes on the hopeful, sad, frightened, and blank faces of the young black girls to whom she taught piano in an L.A. housing project. Brown pointedly sheds light on America's divisive cultural gap, especially as it concerns the inability of whites to understand the hold-harmless attitude of blacks toward their brothers and sisters. In a scene when a fellow Panther expresses outrage at the mockery of one Panther by another, he proclaims that blacks can never criticize other blacks in an antagonistic way. The enemy, he says, is nonblack. Because of this privileged woman's remarkable insight into two strikingly different worlds and her almost storybook existence, both worlds can benefit from a reading of "A Taste of Power," even if only to get a clearer picture of the chasm each has contributed in creating.

I picked this up in a used books store, being attracted to the cover and the subject matter of the Black Panthers. I was blown away by how well this book is written, not to mention the actual story. Rather than gloss over some of the sour points of the Panthers, like the rampant chauvinism, Elaine Brown manages to expose it without tearing down the entire organization, and revealed her personal struggle at the same time. A tremendous woman, and a fantastic book. A must-read for anyone looking into women's, African-American or Black Panther literature.

I definitely was in error when I assumed that most auto-biographies would read dryly like a textbook. This book is fast paced, engaging and incredibly well-written. I suppose I should have expected as much from the newspaper editor of the black panther party! I heartily recommend if you're into gender studies, political studies, inequity studies, or just like a good story.

I read this book in conjunction with Angela Davis' biography and I was absolutely swept away with Brown's life. Her story is epic and I promise you that you won't be disappointed. This book is a must for anyone interested in Women's Studies or African-American politics--or just in revolutionary activity in general! I recommend that you read this with Bill Ayer's Fugitive Days: A Memoir and Angela Davis' biography,Angela Davis: An Autobiography, for an overall look at the state of revolution in America during the 60's and 70's and they all mention each other within the text. Awesome stuff!!

People may get side-tracked by the seemingly poor decisions made by the author in her youth. Overall, the book is so much more than that. To concentrate on the other trivial things will cause one to miss the gift that Ms. Brown gives us: the benefit of her experience and growth. Here was a woman who pioneered the way for all women, black, white, Asian, Hispanic etc., to become politically empowered as she had been. She was fearless, and devoted to the welfare of all minorities, children and women. I recommend this book to any woman who cares about the fate of the underdog in America.

I read this book several years ago and never before reading it or since have I been so completely affected by a book. Reading the story of this woman who elected to dedicate her life to improving the social and political conditions of her people helped me to understand the responsibility we all have to continue the struggle. The book is such an interesting and honest look at the Black Panther party. It is not always comforting, but it is very real. I would not only recommend this book, I would urge anyone who wants to really understand the trials, tribulations, successes, triumphs and ultimately, the failure of the Black Panther Party to read this book. Today!

I enjoyed Elaine Brown's book "A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's story was by far the most engaging read in terms of an autobiography that I have ever encountered. I was totally drawn in by the author's life experiences and strength. She gained in grace as one gains in the hardships of life.