Tag: Assata Shakur

Dystopia, IRL

Parable of the Sower (1993). The Wilderness (2025). Assata (1987).

One, a dystopia set in what is now present day. The second, a searing  contemporary reflection of how we somehow manage to balance light heartedness and impending doom. And third, a stark reminder that the doom is not impending, nor has it already befallen us, rather, it is our very foundation.

The doom is what forced Assata to exile, it’s what colored Octavia’s imagination of a world in which the doom would no longer be deniable, and it’s also what impelled a reality in which revolution sometimes looks like joy and sometimes looks like just getting by and sometimes looks like the wilderness that Angela so beautifully and accurately conjured.

The Wilderness explores adulting through its many phases: life and love, birth and death, friendship and romance. All of these against the backdrop of a burning world and a crumbling empire, our very own IRL dystopia.

In our world, the language of dystopia flows through our daily conversations. Talk of wildfires at dinner with friends and kettling during coffee break in the office kitchen, or more likely when you linger on the zoom with your work bestie.

This is the world we know. Assata and Parable of the Sower remind us that this is the world we’ve always known. Despite the growing discomforts, nothing feels quite like home more than the status quo.

This doom has been looming overhead for generations. Dark, imposing storm clouds, mollifying our outrage by occasionally shapeshifting into a light fog, easing our fears of a flood while never quite clearing our vision. But little did we know, it’s actually us who control the weather. Our compassion the sun, our empathy the blue skies, our love the key to a beautiful day.

Parable of the Sower (1993). The Wilderness (2025). Assata (1987). I wasn’t sure what led me to read these three books one after the other. But, whatever or whoever, I’m grateful for the reminder that while death is certain, it doesn’t have to be imminent. We decide if the sun will shine on only a select few or if it will warm all of humanity.

Signed,

N.A.

Black Women’s Exile

Exile. I’ve been pondering the concept quite a bit of late. Merriam-Webster has two definitions of the word: (1) the state or a period of forced absence from one’s country or home; and (2) the state or a period of voluntary absence from one’s country or home.

There is only one word of difference between the two definitions: “forced” versus “voluntary.” And I ask myself, who has ever voluntarily been in exile?? Is an exit voluntary simply because no one is physically pushing you out?

Tiffanie Drayton’s Black American Refugee elucidates how the United States’ relationship to Black people is abusive. Her book follows her journey of leaving two abusive relationships, one with her partner, and one with America, and returning to her home in Trinidad. Did Tiffanie choose exile?

In the autobiography of Assata Shakur, she details the witch hunt carried out by the US government and its security forces, that came very close to taking her life on more than one occasion, which led to her fleeing to Cuba. Did Assata choose exile?

Blue by Emmelie Prophète details the lives of (fictional) Black women who are trying to escape life in a country with the misfortune of being a former colony and not a former colonizer. But she laments that all that is truly achieved are lonely funerals that loved ones on both sides are too distant and too poor to attend. Do they too choose exile?

So what exactly is a “voluntary” exile? Maybe it is choosing personal liberation over hollow promises of opportunity; choosing a hard life over no life at all.

But are these really choices at all?

Another interesting detail of Merriam-Webster’s definitions is the use of the phrase “country or home.” While the dichotomy of “forced” versus “voluntary” exile leaves me disconcerted, I am at the same time affirmed by the explicit distinction between “country” and “home.” The type of exile I am most intrigued by is the type that afflicts those for whom country and home are not synonymous.

What makes a country a possession if not a feeling of home? What allows for ease of tongue in the utterance of the phrase “my country”? Is it the seal and color of a passport? Is it the culmination of one’s life experiences within a particular border? And what makes a home if there is no country on which it stands? Is it the language of one’s dreams? Is it the smell of a favorite dish ?

Maybe exile is the empty space in the Venn diagram of country and home. Maybe exile is the absence of the privilege, bestowed on so few, to see no delineation between country and home, between passport and pass the plate, between mother tongue and motherland.

It seems to me that there is no choice when it comes to exile. It seems to me that there is only a force, from within or without, but usually both, yearning for a reality in which home and country, and liberation and dignity can all coincide.