When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir in Around the World in 80 Books

Jun 05, 2018 Lindsey Z rated it really liked it

This memoir focuses on the situations in Khan-Cullors’ personal life that inspired her to co-found the Black Lives Matter movement: namely, the terroristic treatment of her brother Monte--a diagnosed schizophrenic who was repeatedly beaten and drugged by LAPD--and the unfortunate life of drug use and prison time of her father, whom she didn’t form a relationship with until her adult years. Her message is clear: Black people in this country are not terrorists, they are terrorized. Khan-Cullors’ w This memoir focuses on the situations in Khan-Cullors’ personal life that inspired her to co-found the Black Lives Matter movement: namely, the terroristic treatment of her brother Monte--a diagnosed schizophrenic who was repeatedly beaten and drugged by LAPD--and the unfortunate life of drug use and prison time of her father, whom she didn’t form a relationship with until her adult years. Her message is clear: Black people in this country are not terrorists, they are terrorized. Khan-Cullors’ writing felt the most potent to me when she combined her personal thoughts and analysis of the larger systemic issues that African Americans must navigate on a daily basis with her personal story. Her chapter about Trayvon Martin’s death blew me away and was so powerful in its scope, message, and deep understanding of how oppression works in this country and how our systems (like policing) make it possible for a young Black boy to walk around a neighborhood and be shot down in cold blood and his killer to be met with impunity. She refuses to name his killer, which was a strong and effective rhetorical choice for me as a reader. You come to realize that BLM was not a movement born out of spontaneity but out of a deeply felt need and will to survive. Living vs. surviving are not synonymous, and Khan-Cullors breaks down the ways in which they aren’t for Black people in particular. She has a clear sense about partial freedom and full freedom and a desire for African Americans to have access to the latter without having to die for it.

Another aspect of her memoir that I appreciated is her awareness and practice of intersectionality. As a queer Black woman, she understands that her experience being Black is quite different from the many Black male victims whom are most often represented in the media. She memorializes a number of Black women who have lost their lives to police brutality; they were women I had never heard of, which goes to show that even the space of memorializing victims is gendered and heterosexist. She also employs the single pronoun “they” to describe a couple of her lovers, and I saw this use as a means to model and normalize a somewhat new practice. This memoir is, above all, a woman’s connection between her personal experiences and the BLM movement. It is not necessarily a piece of nonfiction that outlines the logistics of the founding of BLM, but that’s what I liked about it. Khan-Cullors’ story is grounded in reality and felt experience, which is often how grass roots movements take hold in our country. I would love to read a follow up of the work BLM chapters have done since the movement’s inception (because I know they’ve been working tirelessly since where the memoir leaves off), but this memoir is an apt place to start learning about the motivations behind one woman’s vision for the movement.
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