cover image Target Zero: A Life in Writing

Target Zero: A Life in Writing

Eldridge Cleaver. Palgrave MacMillan, $27.95 (336pp) ISBN 978-1-4039-6237-9

This collection traces the life of civil rights activist and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver using his own words. Divided into four parts (""Early Years,"" ""Revolution,"" ""Exile"" and ""Transition""), the volume moves from Cleaver's reminisces of his youth in southern California, through his extensive prison internment (which, as he tells it, provided the impetus for his intellectual development), his time with the then-fledgling Black Panthers, his seven-year exile in Cuba, Algeria and France, and finally, his continued efforts at promoting civil rights upon his return to the United States. These essays, poems, excerpts of Eldridge's autobiography and interviews work together to reveal the tempestuous and complex workings of a man as he evolved from a child angry at his father for beating his mother to an angst-ridden radical convinced that rape was a revolutionary act, to an international fugitive and, finally, to a converted Christian activist. Cleaver's language varies dramatically throughout the course of his story: the same man who wrote, ""a pig white...deep-fried in the fat of his own bullshit"" later penned a poem called ""A Love Letter Writing Butterfly"" that contains the line, ""I'm a dreamer looking for a dreamgirl.""