When They Call You a Terrorist

"We strive to be different, to love and honor the singular us along with the collective us. We want to build a world in which undeveloped and unrefined emotional instincts—like possessiveness and jealousy—are minimized as much as humanly possible so that all eyes, hearts, and spirits are not distracted from the goal. And the goal is freedom. The goal is to live beyond fear. The goal is to end the occupation of our bodies and souls by the agents of a larger American culture that demonstrates daily how we don’t matter" (148).

This memoir recounts the work that Patrisse Khan-Cullors has done in her life so far. The difficult, relentless, accountable, devastating, creative, invigorating, inspiring, nourishing, and sometimes triumphant work that is love. Khan-Cullors, collaborating with asha bandele, describes not only her role in co-founding and organizing Black Lives Matter, but the lifetime of engagement and love-as-an-action which preceded and followed the creation of Black Lives Matter. Khan-Cullors impactfully describes her loving father, a wounded healer taken from her again and again by the prison industrial complex, addiction, and violence. She tells of her brother: his gentleness, his existence on the schizoaffective spectrum, his torture by authorities within Los Angeles County Jail and mistreatment by healthcare and law enforcement alike. She tells of her own experience as a Queer Black woman and her efforts to include Black Trans and Queer people as central to the work of realizing a more just future. This memoir is a truly urgent, devastating, and luminous one story of work and love that is grounded equally in the political and the spiritual. Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to (but which others may be thrilled to find sensitively discussed in their literature: racism, addiction, incarceration, torture, police violence, homophobia, mistreatment of people with mental illness, death.

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