Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's

Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story is, one hopes, only one woman's story and not the story of the Black Panther Party as a whole. In this gossipy, self-obsessed, and superficial memoir, Brown appears to be not a serious leader of a vital and important activist group of the 1960s and 1970s, but a Party groupie with little interest in or understanding of the concepts and goals which inspired the Panthers, however naive and romantic most of those concepts and goals might have been. If Brown is truly the woman she seems to be, it does not say much for the Panthers as a group, considering that she did, in fact, become chairman of the group in the absence of her mentor and leader, Huey Newton. Knowing she would remain loyal to him, Newton likely picked Brown in order to prevent a takeover by one of his rivals.

The book is first an autobiography, and second an account, however incomplete and sensationalistic, of the rise and fall of the Party through its ever-turbulent existence. The rare spurts of political philosophy in the book feel shoehorned in, as if Brown felt that she could not simply present a kiss-and-tell book, but was obliged to at least mention the political aspects of her life in the Panthers. She freely admits to having no interest in or knowledge of politics before her sudden introduction to the Panthers, and it seems that her political interest after that introduction was minimal, despite her rise to power in the group. She seems far more inte

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take control of their local political machinery. Then they will attack the economic structure in each city. Bit by bit, city by city, they will whittle away at the capitalist foundation. Eventually, a time will come--not in our lifetimes, Comrades--but a time will come when the people will understand their power and the pigs' machinery will be unable to accommodate their demands. that is when the people . . . will rise up . . . and make the revolution (5). Brown's background made her a very likely candidate to be absorbed as she was into the Black Panthers, mind, heart and soul. She was raised in poverty, fear, filth, despair, rats and roaches, hunger, and violence in a Philadelphia ghetto. Her mother treated her well physically, but inculcated in her a fear of life. Love, she was taught "is a misunderstanding between two fools" (18). Brown did find a love and a talent in music and singing, in which she would find solace later in life. Primarily, however, with respect to her role in the Panthers, Brown learned lessons in life which would leave her with little self-esteem but with a burning desire for acceptance at any cost: "I became a biddable little wretch. I did anything to belong among them, those white children and

Category: Literature - E