When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
By: Patrisse Khan-Cullors, asha bandele / Narrated By: Patrisse Khan-Cullors
Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
Because Black lives matter…
I’m often leery of anger-based memoirs. The sense that it’s all about poor-me mistreatment, and I was kinda expecting that from When They Call You A Terrorist, but the only way to honor a movement is by listening to and really absorbing information that you can’t get because you’re not one of The Other.
This memoir does have anger in it, but mostly it’s about Patrisse being one helluva woman and fighter. And not only that. The Black Lives Matter movement is about love, especially as it was started by mostly women. Strong women who were absolutely sickened by the lack of action being taken to protect the sanctity of life. She really takes you into what it’s like to be targeted simply for the color of your skin, of how devastatingly unequal treatment is between whites and blacks. She offers how a black shooter, one who kills, is shot dead whereas white shooters, mass murderers are taken into custody alive, even given fast food on their way into the station. Blacks have to deal with the very real possibility of being killed while arrested. Or heck! Of being arrested at all, for nothing.
The audiobook really shines, though, when Patrisse speaks of her family, of her brothers, her sister, her mother, and both her fathers. One father leaves the family, and her birth father is a loving presence when he can be. Though he’s incarcerated several times on drug charges, when he’s around he manages to instill in her a penchant for openness and for total honesty. Through him, she learns to be her best self and to confront things head on.
So naturally, starting a movement is totally up her alley. It’s based on her wanting more for her brothers, wanting more for the young men she knows but who have had their lives taken away from them for mistakes that would be overlooked if they were only white. It’s based on living lives where young men are called “super predators” and where the Three Strikes, You’re Out rule has painful, painful consequences.
We’re supposed to be more than our biggest mistake, but that’s not the way it goes in our society if you’re black. There is no mercy, and Patrisse is even more concerned now that we have whom we do as President (though she is greatly upset by him, she’s equally upset with the Democratic Party for offering whom they did as a candidate in the 2016 election. Which I think is harsh, but When They Call You A Terrorist is not about me; it’s about learning what it is to be in someone else’s shoes).
She also goes into the mistreatment of the mentally ill by officers of the law. Her own brother, who is schizo-affective, is shot with rubber bullets during his episodes. There is no patience for those dealing with psychotic breaks. Which, actually, is true whether you’re black or white. Cops COMPLETELY misunderstand mental illness. But before there is police intervention, there’s the fact that blacks don’t have the same access to mental health care.
This audiobook, well-narrated by Patrisse herself, does indeed have a lot of anger in it, but it’s an important book, definitely something we need to listen to so that we stop demonizing The Other, Them, Those Who Are Different. It’s a short listen, but it’s an important one.
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