Calling attention to the plight of death row activist, journalist and NPR contributor Abu-Jamal, award-winning science fiction author Bisson attempts a full-scale portrait of the controversial figure implicated in a police slaying in Philadelphia nearly two decades ago. What he delivers is a well-intended rehash of mainstream media accounts. The book's real value is in its chronicle of Abu-Jamal's bold, inquisitive youth on Philadelphia's mean streets, inspired by his exceptional mother to become a compulsive reader with a deeply curious mind. In school, Abu-Jamal discovered the causes of black liberation and black power, and became a natural student leader. In his early teens, he faced his first police run-in at one of George Wallace's presidential campaign rallies and was "beaten so badly that his own mother didn't recognize him." His tenure with the Black Panthers during their glory days awakened his talent for writing and activism, and so impressed his comrades in Philadelphia that they made him lieutenant of information at age 15. Abu-Jamal's tireless efforts on behalf of the Panthers brought him to the attention of Hoover's FBI, placing him on the infamous Cointelpro target list. A series of painful episodes of police harassment and intimidation against Abu-Jamal followed, ultimately leading to that fateful night in 1981 when Abu-Jamal was shot and seriously wounded while defending his brother during a conflict that ended in the shooting death of an officer. Labeled a "cop-killer," Abu-Jamal faced a highly charged trial that ended in a death sentence that has stirred international interest. Written in short, energetic vignettes, Bisson's tribute occasionally fails to fill in the gaps in Abu-Jamal's travails, choosing heated rhetoric over researched substance at a time when more information and less fist pumping would suit the imprisoned writer's cause well.
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Abu-Jamal, condemned to death in 1982 in a murder trial seen by many as notoriously unjust, has continued to draw on his journalistic skills and voice his passionate and informed observations from death row, just as he has ever since he joined the Black Panthers as an ardent and gifted teenager and promptly became the lieutenant of information for the Philadelphia chapter and an enemy of the state in the eyes of the FBI and the police. His books, including All Things Censored [BKL My 1 00], are widely read, and many people, some quite famous, have been working on his behalf. In an engrossing, straight-ahead style, acclaimed science-fiction writer and political activist Bisson chronicles Abu-Jamal's childhood, the evolution of his political consciousness, and his tireless and nearly fatal efforts to unveil the truth about racism. Leery of being seen as a saint instead of a revolutionary, Abu-Jamal asked that the book be fun to read, and, indeed, Bisson's incisive tale is every bit as charming as it is enraging. Donna Seaman
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Review
Gripping
This book opens an important window on the life of a brilliant and uncompromising dissident. -- Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine
Practically everyone has heard of Mumia, and whenever his name is invoked, controversy ensues. Bisson has crafted a powerful book. I couldn't put it down. -- Sister Helen Prejean, author, Dead Man Walking
The next time you see Mumia demonized in the mainstream media, pick up this book. It chronicles the evolution of an eloquent advocate for the damned. -- Martin Espada, author, Zapata's Disciple
To read this book is to gain deep insights into issues of race and poverty -and the pretenses of our nation with regard to equal justice before the law. -- Howard Zinn, author, A People's History of the US
From the Inside Flap
In this first biography of Mumia, award-winning author Terry Bisson brings to life the world's most famous prisoner since Nelson Mandela. To some, Mumia is a dangerous ex-Panther whose revolutionary ideas must be silenced and suppressed. To others, he is a daring journalist whose tireless efforts to expose injustice and fight censorship have made him a "voice of the voiceless." Who is Mumia?
Meet the man behind the headlines, and decide for yourself.
About the Author
Terry Bisson is the author of numerous science fiction novels, short stories, motion picture novelizations, and a biography of Nat Turner for young adults. A winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as Frances Gran Prix de lImaginaire, Bisson has written for The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation. Recent nonfiction projects include Hauling up the Morning (an anthology of writing by political prisoners), and Sleeping Where I Fall (the memoirs of activist film star Peter Coyote), both of which he edited. Washington Post Book World
Bissons work is a fresh, imaginative attempt to confront some of the problems of our time...
San Diego Union-Tribune
Bissons quick jabs to the funny bone and the intellect are more powerful than many a lesser artists attempt at a knockout punch
and bespeak a remarkable creativity.
Why write about Mumia?
These brief impressionistic sketches were designed to give the contours and flavor of a life that Mumia insists is not exceptional at all, but representative of the lives of many of the youth of his generation, and particularly black youth, who were informed and set into motion by the welcome upheavals of history. Its a good story and one hes rightfully proud of. Im pleased to have been given a stab at telling it. (from the Afterword)
Why not an autobiography?
Its generally either hubris or foolishness when one writer writes another writers life. My only excuse is that I was asked. Mumia is too busy writing about others to bother with himself. (from the Afterword)
But why a science fiction writer?
The job of a sci-fi writer is to make strange worlds familiar, and what could be stranger today than the sixties, when white supremacy and corporate hegemony seemed not only threatened but actually on the run in Vietnam, Latin America, Africa? How could I describe to todays youth what it felt like to know that the Revolution was just around the corner? That the world was changing every day for the better? If you can do Mars, you can do the sixties, Mumia told me with a hopeful, slightly wistful, homesick grin. (from the Afterword)
