An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created

In this riveting group portrait, journalist Holley (Murder Ballads) chronicles the Black Panther movement from the 1960s to the present through the lives of the Shakur family. The Shakurs, a close-knit group of friends and relations who changed their surnames together in honor of Black nationalist Salahdeen Shakur, included Mutulu, an acupuncture trailblazer, and Salahdeen’s biological son Lumumba, cofounder of the Harlem Panthers. But it is the exploits of formidable Shakur women that stand out here. After Afeni, mother of rapper Tupac, was arrested in 1969 as one of the “Panther 21” charged with conspiracy to bomb various locations in New York City, she represented herself in court and managed to secure the group’s acquittal. Assata—a member of the breakaway Black Liberation Army, which rose to prominence after the 1973 death of Salahdeen’s other son Zayd in a shoot-out with police—engineered a bold prison break in 1979. Groomed to be a Black liberation leader, Tupac was ultimately more artist than revolutionary, according to Holley. Sweeping and sober, this is a vital chapter in the history of the struggle for racial justice. (May)