The Radical Read Series: An Abantu Audio and Black Women Radicals Collaborative Online Book Series
Image of radical Black women activists: Afeni Shakur, Elaine Brown, Connie Matthews, Denise Oliver-Velez, Charlotte Hill O’Neal, Ericka Huggins, Assata Shakur, Kathleen Cleaver, and Angela Y. Davis. Photo credit: Luc Cadet.
The Radical Read Series is an online collaborative book club series between Abantu Audio and Black Women Radicals that centers Black women and gender expansive authors.
The Radical Read Series is an online collaborative book club series between Abantu Audio and Black Women Radicals, with a mission of centering Black women and gender expansive authors. Abantu Audio is an oral and audiobook storytelling digital medium, using audiobooks to bring stories of the oppressed at the forefront of social discussion in hopes of building bridges of understanding and awareness amongst all people.
The mission of the book club is to provide and curate a safe space that speaks to the Black experience(s), particularly the Black feminist experience, through literature. Moreover, the online book club series seeks to provide an intersectional interrogation on activism, organizing, and leadership from the perspective of the radical Black feminist tradition and how Black women and gender expansive authors, activists, educators, artists, and more have historically contributed and continue to contribute radical Black politics.
PAST EVENTS
The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland:
A Conversation with Dr. Robyn C. Spencer
On Thursday, August 26th, 2021, we co-hosted the first event in the #RadicalReadSeries, and had an insightful conversation with Dr. Robyn C. Spencer, author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland!
Luc Cadet, co-founder of Abantu Audio; Jaimee Swift, executive director of Black Women Radicals; and writer Karla Mendez were in conversation with Dr. Spencer, who examined the role and leadership of women in the Black Panther Party in Oakland; discussed her work as a scholar-activist; why centering Black women in radical movement building is important; and more.
Dr. Robyn C. Spencer is a historian that focuses on Black social protest after World War II, urban, and working-class radicalism, and gender. Her book, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland was published in 2016. She is co-founder of the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project and has written widely on gender and Black Power. Her writings have appeared in the Journal of Women’s History and Souls as well as The Washington Post, Vibe Magazine, Colorlines, In These Times and Truthout. She has received awards for her work from the Mellon foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Association of Black Women Historians. She is currently in residence at the Institute of Advanced Study in the school of Social Science finishing her second book project on Black protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam. She is also working on biographies of two radical women: Angela Davis and Patricia Robinson.