Women, Black Power and Autobiography: A Black Feminist Literary Tradition

This dissertation explores the continuities between early Black women’s autobiographies and the autobiographies written by women active in the Black Power movement. It argues that Black women activists of the 1960s and 1970s—most notably Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown—appropriate the autobiographical form not only to recount their personal activism but also to create a counter-cultural, political instrument that exposes the persistence of racism in American society. Through close readings of "Angela Davis: An Autobiography", "Assata", and "A Taste of Power", alongside critical studies such as Margo Perkins’s "Autobiography as Activism", this study situates Black Power women’s life narratives within the broader literary tradition shaped by their foremothers. While writers such as Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth used autobiography to mobilize readers against slavery, Davis, Shakur, and Brown demonstrate a sharp political consciousness and a renewed purpose that reflects the social conditions of their era. The analysis concludes that Black Power women’s autobiographies extend and transform the canon of Black women’s life writing, framing autobiography as a political act. As a subgenre, Black women’s political autobiography evolves with time, consistently serving as testimony, critique, and a call to collective struggle.