Society and space

Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013, 291 pages, $18.95/£14.00 paperback, ISBN 978-0-8166-7649-1, 
$24.95/£32 hardback ISBN 978-0-8166-7648-4. (http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/body-and-soul)

Portrayals of the Black Panther Party have varied considerably across academic writing and popular media, Lee Daniel’s The Butler (2013) being the most recent example of the latter. From a purely instrumental perspective, discussions of the Party have been at their most productive when they resisted producing reductive caricatures of the ‘bad militant’ or the ‘good civil rights hero’. By instrumental, I mean: how can thinking about the actions of and reactions to the Black Panther Party be helpful to academics, activists and other individuals opposed to structural inequality today? Continue reading Angela Last’s review here