MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Thrilling confessional candour about the time of the Panthers
ANGUS REID highly recommends a memoir of high literary merit written in concise, finely crafted and fast-moving prose
Elaine Brown, second from right, and other BPP members taken from FBI file Los Angeles, Classification - Civil Unrest
[National Archives/public domain] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
A Taste of Power
by Elaine Brown
Penguin Modern Classics £10.99
WHEN the revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara launched the Black Institute in 1986 in Burkina Faso, he did so with the words: “Black people must take responsibility for their own history and contribute to universal civilisation.”
Elaine Brown’s memoir A Taste of Power, newly reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic, takes the lead from a black woman’s perspective within the US.
Brown joined the Black Panther Party in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King. In 1974, when founder, chairman and “minister of defence” Huey Newton went into exile in Cuba he made her the leader, a position she maintained for three years, from 1974 to 1977.
More from this author
ANGUS REID applauds the ambitious occupation of a vast abandoned paper factory by artists mindful of the departed workforce
ANGUS REID calls for artists and curators to play their part with political and historical responsibility
ANGUS REID recommends a landmark work of aural history that follows the intertwined lives of four International Brigaders
ANGUS REID reviews a book that is an important and comprehensive work of documentation
