Target Zero: A Life in Writing - Hardcover

Cleaver, Eldridge

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1403962375 ISBN 13: 9781403962379

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2006

Synopsis

Former Black Panther information minister Eldridge Cleaver was a complex man who inspired profound adulation, love, rage, and, among many, fear. Target Zero brings Cleaver's controversial story into focus through his own words. This books charts Cleaver's life through his writings: his quiet childhood, his youth spent in prison, his startling emergence as a Black Panther leader who became a "fugitive from justice" by the end of 1968, his seven-year exile, and his religious and political conversion following his return to the U.S. Target Zero, which brings together previously unpublished essays, short stories, letters, interviews, and poems, is the most significant collection of Eldridge Cleaver's writing since his bestselling book Soul on Ice (1968).

About this title

About the Author

Eldridge Cleaver is the celebrated author of Soul on Ice and was the information minister of the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Cleaver is a senior lecturer at Yale University and at Emory Law School. She joined Eldridge Cleaver in the Black Panther Party in 1967, when they married. She is an attorney and author, and is currently at work on her memoir, Memories of Love and War.

Reviews

This collection traces the life of civil rights activist and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver using his own words. Divided into four parts ("Early Years," "Revolution," "Exile" and "Transition"), the volume moves from Cleaver's reminisces of his youth in southern California, through his extensive prison internment (which, as he tells it, provided the impetus for his intellectual development), his time with the then-fledgling Black Panthers, his seven-year exile in Cuba, Algeria and France, and finally, his continued efforts at promoting civil rights upon his return to the United States. These essays, poems, excerpts of Eldridge's autobiography and interviews work together to reveal the tempestuous and complex workings of a man as he evolved from a child angry at his father for beating his mother to an angst-ridden radical convinced that rape was a revolutionary act, to an international fugitive and, finally, to a converted Christian activist. Cleaver's language varies dramatically throughout the course of his story: the same man who wrote, "a pig white...deep-fried in the fat of his own bullshit" later penned a poem called "A Love Letter Writing Butterfly" that contains the line, "I'm a dreamer looking for a dreamgirl."
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Cleaver's former wife offers a collection of writings that reflects his transformation from an angry, talented young black man, bent on avenging himself against American racism, to a born-again Christian champion of American capitalism. The collection includes essays, interviews, memoirs, letters, speeches, and poems. The book is divided into four parts: Cleaver's early years in prison, where he started writing and completed Soul on Ice; his revolutionary years, including involvement with the Black Panthers; his seven-year exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France; and his transformation later in life. The book includes Cleaver's writings on the split with Newton and the struggle within the Panther party as egos clashed. This book is a fascinating look at the transformation of a major figure in black-power politics and a tumultuous era in the U.S.

Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1403962375
• ISBN 13: 9781403962379
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Cleaver Kathleen