Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

by Charlene Carruthers Narrated by Charlene Carruthers

Overview

A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.

Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/21/2018
This electrifying debut by Carruthers, founding director of Black Youth Project 100, is part testimony and part activist’s toolbox with snippets of Carruthers’s personal history sprinkled throughout. Carruthers makes an urgent case for organizing movements and reexamining history through a black queer feminist lens to better equip activists in a “principled struggle” to end racism, ableism, homophobia, patriarchy, and ingrained prejudice. She outlines strategies on how to prioritize issues, build strong leaders, and adopt healing justice to bring about radical change. She devotes an entire chapter to the Chicago model of activism, which dates to the antieviction protests of the 1930s when “communist-inspired organizing... is said to have mobilize five thousand people in less than 30 minutes to stop an eviction.” Carruthers, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and remains active in the community, points to the more recent success of the “Reparations now!” campaign, which, in 2016 after decades of work, won $5.5 million in reparations for victims of racist police violence in Chicago. Incantatory without being incendiary, strong but not strident, Carruthers argues for “a world in which everyone is able to live with dignity and in right relationship with the land we inhabit.” This handbook for the revolution is a rousing call for collective liberation. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

This handbook for the revolution is a rousing call for collective liberation.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Timely and important, Carruthers’ book is a strong testament to the resilience of the radical black liberation movement as well as an impassioned appeal to continue the fight for social justice in a political environment characterized by increasing hostility to equality and difference. Powerful, potent reading.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A powerful handbook to the contemporary black liberation movement . . . A bracing and provocative report from the front line.”
—Booklist

“The slim, passionate volume chronicles Carruthers’ political evolution and features important lessons learned through an education in Saul Alinsky-informed community organizing, providing concrete tools for a new generation.”
—In These Times

“[Unapologetic] does not waver in its commitment to telling hard truths or demanding justice.”
—Women’s Review of Books

“Charlene Carruthers carries the burden, the beauty, the wisdom of four hundred years of Black struggle. But she also brings a critical perspective and a creative vision, rooted in her extensive experience as an organizer and organic intellectual and in her fierce and fearless commitment to truth. This is an inspiring, powerful, but difficult book, because she confronts our movements, our people, our closeted silences, toxic masculinity, patriarchal violence, romantic and selective historical memory, and our future head-on, through a radical Black queer feminist lens. Welcome to the Black radical tradition.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“This brilliant and powerful book is a clarion call to keep alive the Black radical tradition in these reactionary times. Charlene A. Carruthers is an exemplary organic intellectual rooted in the struggles of black poor and working people, especially LGBTQ youth, with a subtle analysis and an international vision for freedom. She stands in the great lineage of Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Marsha P. Johnson—grand fighters and great lovers of everyday black people and oppressed folk everywhere!”
—Dr. Cornel West

“Charlene Carruthers is a powerful organizer, radical thinker, paradigm-shifter, and one of the most influential political voices of her generation. Anyone seriously interested in the struggle for Black liberation in this country needs to listen carefully to what she has to say.”
—Barbara Ransby, author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement and Making All Black Lives Matter

“Leadership is the ability to not only make your own way but to return to give others a roadmap that they, too, can follow. This is what Charlene Carruthers does with Unapologetic. She offers us a guide to getting free with incisive prose, years of grassroots organizing experience, and a deeply intersectional lens. She doesn’t forget any of us, and reminds us that bringing all of ourselves and our people with us is the only way any of us will get free.”
—Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty

“Unapologetic serves as our marching orders. Charlene gives us not just a manual but a prayer, an intention, a critical path forward, and a deep analysis on where we’ve been. She educates us about community violence and state violence, and provides the clarity to show why Black liberation is crucial for us all.”
—Patrisse Khan Cullors, coauthor of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

“Unapologetic is a beautiful, insightful, and powerful analysis of this moment, Black movements, and Black radical futures. Both Charlene Carruthers’s work as an organizer and organic intellectual and her writing in Unapologetic embody the Black radical tradition and the best of Black feminism today. Carruthers confronts the difficulties of organizing in this era, while also detailing the possibilities of collective struggle. She helps us understand the contours of a Black queer feminist future and what we all must do to get there. This is a must-read for anyone committed to freedom and liberation.”
—Cathy J. Cohen, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics

“With this clear call to action, Charlene Carruthers’s Unapologetic is a desperately needed analysis of the past, the present, and where we must head into the future. It’s a must-read for everyone who wants deeper, honest insight into the struggles happening in our country right now, clarifying why stopping anti-Black racism, homophobia, and sexism and building transformative power intersectionally are urgent necessities for our families, communities, and the nation.”
—Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, author, executive director and cofounder of MomsRising.org

“Unapologetic is as much a narrative about collective youth-driven organizing by those affiliated with the current Movement for Black Lives as it is a story about how one young Black woman from the South Side of Chicago found herself leading one of the most consequential formations of the past decade. The book offers practical tips for organizers along with a critical analysis of the promise and pitfalls of this current iteration of the Black radical tradition. As an organizer, I found myself nodding along as I read this terrific book while taking notes to improve my own practice.”
—Mariame Kaba, founder of Project NIA and cofounder of Survived & Punished

“Charlene Carruthers speaks with the authenticity and authority of an organizer from the front lines of struggle. Cut from the cloth of the South Side of Chicago, Carruthers offers a critical perspective into the experience of organizing and building a movement from the inside. As an organizer, Charlene provides rare insight into the strategies, tactics, and raging debates that animate the phenomenon of Black Lives Matter. If you want to understand this movement and the people whose hands are dirty from working with the grassroots, then you need this book.”
—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

Kirkus Reviews

2018-06-18
A black lesbian activist offers insight into forging a radical black liberation movement through the lens of her experience as a community organizer in Chicago.Frederick Douglass once wrote that "power concedes nothing without a demand." Carruthers, who is best known as the founding national director of the Black Youth Project 100, revises her predecessor's observation to highlight that it is "organized demand" that wins revolutionary struggles. Drawing on her experience as a reader, thinker, and grass-roots activist, the author illuminates the past, present, and future of black radicalism. She opens by first addressing recent "calls to end identity politics." Carruthers argues that what is needed instead is to "end liberalism." The intersectionalist approaches of black queer feminists are what will give (white) democratic progressives the tools to combat the intertwined ills of patriarchy and capitalism. A crucial part of the movement also involves reviving—or reimagining—the black radical tradition. Only by remembering the collective past can activists resist social erasure and see a clear way forward. In the fight to end liberalism, writes the author, focusing on such issues as "leadership development [and] healing justice" is also key. Moreover, activists must be self-reflective at all times and ask themselves and each other questions about who they are, where they came from, what they want and want to build, and whether they are "ready to win." The author concludes with a discussion of the "Chicago Model" of community organizing and a mandate to continue the struggle. Though imperfect, the Chicago Model still managed to bring together "multiple institutions with varying political alignment" to fight police brutality and oust racist and corrupt political officials. Timely and important, Carruthers' book is a strong testament to the resilience of the radical black liberation movement as well as an impassioned appeal to continue the fight for social justice in a political environment characterized by increasing hostility to equality and difference.Powerful, potent reading.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169499476
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/28/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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