Assata: An Autobiography

“The personal is political” is a slogan popularized by Carol Hanisch through her 1970 essay of the same title. This statement became closely associated with second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. It makes what was at the time a radical claim: that the experiences women had in the private domestic sphere had political merit, especially when it came to the fight for pay equity in the workforce and fair distribution of labor. While Shakur does not ascribe to second-wave feminist ideology, she acknowledges in her autobiography that her radicalization was built from the efforts of movements that preceded her, which included Black activism from the Civil Rights era.

Shakur’s understanding of the relationship between the personal and the political draws from her recognition that as a Black revolutionary woman, her personal experiences when it came to racism, sexism, and targeting by the state not only had an intimate impact on her wellbeing, but also fueled her political activism. While her autobiography explores less of her relationship to the domestic sphere, her discussion of her intimate involvement across different organizing communities becomes a way of articulating her relationship between her personal experiences and the politics behind them.

The autobiographical project is in many ways a demonstration of “The personal is political” for Shakur.