Entertainment Weekly’s “13 Books to Read in January,” Cassius’ “Black Books to Add to Your Reading List,” Vogue’s “The Most Anticipated Books of January 2018,” Paste’s “10 of the Best Books of January 2018,” Bitch Magazine’s “Bitch Reads: 13 Books Feminists Should Read in January,” ELLE’s “19 of the Best Books to Read This Winter.”
"Strikingly beautiful… Patrisse Cullors' story is a moral example to the nation."Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America
“This book is a must-read for all of us.”—Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow
"This is a story of perseverance from a woman who found her voice in a world that often tried to shut her out. When They Call You a Terrorist is more than just a reflection on the American criminal justice system. It’s a call to action for readers to change a culture that allows for violence against people of color." – TIME Magazine, named one of the Best Memoirs of 2018 So Far
“Impassioned, direct, inspiring and unsparing.” – Entertainment Weekly
“This powerful book by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors reminds us American racism is pervasive…the mission of Khan-Cullors and her fellow activists has never been more important – or more urgent.” The Guardian
"[A] fierce, intimate memoir." - O Magazine
"A thoroughly modern, frequently poetic take on the black-freedom-struggle narrative."- Ms. Mag
"With great candor about her complex personal life, Khan-Cullors has created a memoir as compelling as a page-turning novel." - Booklist Starred Review
"This searing, timely look into a contemporary movement from one of its crucial leading voices belongs in all collections." - Library Journal Starred Review
An eye-opening and eloquent coming-of-age story from one of the leaders in the new generation of social activists.” —PublishersWeekly, starred review
"An important account of coming of age within today's explosive racial dynamic.” - Kirkus Reviews
"When They Call You a Terrorist deals with the incarceration and disenfranchisement of black men like her father, but it also explores facets of Cullors’ personal identity — black womanhood and sexuality,
as well as spirituality."—TIME
"One of 2018’s most important nonfiction books." - The Root
"[A] meditative, meaningful work … Cullors beautifully expresses empathy, honesty and hope” —Shelf Awareness
"Responsible, awakening and powerful."– Nick Cannon
“It was when I read your book, ‘When They Call You A Terrorist’—when Trump was elected—that I realized that white supremacy is closer to the surface than I had ever realized, and I thought, ‘Man, I better understand this more.’” – Jane Fonda
“Patrisse Khan-Cullors is a leading visionary and activist, feminist, and civil rights leader who has literally changed the trajectory of politics and resistance in America.” —Eve Ensler, bestselling author
“This book tells why we all share the responsibility to move those three words from an aspiration into a new reality.” – American Book Award Winner Jeff Chang
"With grace and vulnerability, she recounts in When They Call You a Terrorist an upbringing plagued by interlocking oppressions and generational trauma, and illustrates the gut-wrenching power of her movement’s message: Black lives must be recognized as worthy in this world." - Teaching Tolerance Magazine
★ 05/01/2018
Khan-Cullors, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, was raised in a family and community impacted by poverty. Her parents worked multiple jobs, and the family struggled with job, housing, and food insecurity. At age nine, she saw the police beat and arrest her brother Monte. Although Monte has schizoaffective disorder, he was placed in solitary confinement without access to necessary medication. This interaction, as well as her time at a predominantly white school, forced Khan-Cullors to see the different ways blacks and whites experience the world. She contrasts Monte's story with the police's treatment of white mentally ill inmates who receive better treatment. The brutality her brother endured, along with the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin's killer, made her realize that the fight for change needed to begin within her own community. This insightful firsthand account of the creation of BLM deftly exposes the injustices of the United States' social structures and calls for an end to a judicial system that leaves black men and women unprotected and their families broken. VERDICT An excellent look at the history of this movement, especially for those who appreciated the social commentary of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me.—Desiree Thomas, Worthington Library, OH
2017-11-13
A founder of Black Lives Matter chronicles growing up sensitive and black in a country militarized against her community.With assistance from Bandele (Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story, 2009, etc.), Khan-Cullors synthesizes memoir and polemic to discuss oppressive policing and mass imprisonment, the hypocrisy of the drug war, and other aspects of white privilege, portraying the social network-based activism of BLM and like-minded groups as the only rational response to American-style apartheid. She argues repeatedly and powerfully that mechanisms have evolved to ensnare working-class people of color from childhood, while white Americans are afforded leniency in their youthful trespasses. She learned of such hidden codes early, and she documents her hardscrabble but vibrant upbringing in segregated, suburban Los Angeles during the 1980s. The drug war's resurgence, and a newly punitive attitude toward the poor, cast a shadow over the lives of her endlessly working mother and her male relatives: "[My brother] and his friends—really all of us—were out there trying to stay safe against the onslaught of adults who, Vietnam-like, saw the enemy as anyone Black or Brown." Her perspective was amplified by attending segregated, gifted schools in adjoining white suburbs, where she explored the arts and acknowledged her queer sexuality while developing a passion for social organizing. Later, her outrage over the unpunished killings of Trayvon Martin and others led her and two friends to brainstorm a new, viral social justice movement: "We know we want whatever we create to have global reach." The author's passion is undeniable and infectious, but the many summary-based passages sometimes feel repetitive, and the concrete narrative of BLM's expanding activism is underdeveloped. Since she emphasizes her organizational focus as prioritizing the role of women of color and LBGT or gender-nonconforming individuals, the audience for this socially relevant jeremiad may be limited.Not without flaws but an important account of coming of age (and rage) within today's explosive racial dynamic.