La playlist di Marilyn Buck

Authors

  • Dan Berger University of Washington at Bothell
  • Valentina Romanzi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2018.i11.525

Keywords:

Marilyn Buck, prison, activism, Black Panthers

Abstract

"Marilyn Buck's Playlist" offers a meditation on memory, political commitment, social justice, and the power of culture in recent American history. The article provides a personal and historical examination of Marilyn Buck, a white woman who spent twenty-five years in prison for her activism in solidarity with the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Sick with advanced ovarian cancer, Buck was granted compassionate release in 2010 and died three weeks later. Here, I reflect on Buck's legacy, drawing from our ten-year correspondence as well as Buck's writings (she became an accomplished poet, translator, and essayist during her incarceration) to argue that Buck's political militancy and cultural commentary constitute a revolutionary ethos that prison redirected but failed to stifle.

References

Buck, Marilyn. “Incommunicado,” http://marilynbuck.com/incommunicado.html.

Buck, Marilyn. On Self-censorship. San Francisco: Parentheses Writing Series, 1995.

Buck, Marilyn. Rescue the Word: Poems. San Francisco: Friends of Marilyn Buck, 2011.

Buck, Marilyn. “The Struggle for Status Under International Law.” Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion. A cura di Joy James. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 198-215.

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folks. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Espada, Martin. “Imagine the Angels of Bread.” Yes! 30 settembre 1999. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/power-of-one/2266

Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Jackson, George. Blood in my Eye. Baltimore: Black Classics Press, 1990.

Perri Rossi, Cristina and Marilyn Buck, States of Exile. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2008.

Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

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Published

2018-06-01

Issue

Section

Articles (general section) - American language, literature, and culture