Publisher's Synopsis
They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, pursued, imprisoned, exiled, and killed. But the true and complete story of the Shakur family - one of the most famous names in contemporary black history - has never been told. Known primarily today for Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker, living for three decades in Cuban exile; or her world-famous godson, the late rapper Tupac, the Shakur family has long held a pivotal position in Black American politics. Beginning with the story of family patriarch, Salahdeen Shakur, in the turbulent aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murder in 1968, journalist and writer Santi Elijah Holley traces the links between the family and the wider struggle for Black liberation. An Amerikan Family is the story of hope and betrayal, addiction and murder, persecution and revolution. No mere family genealogy, it is the story of black America's long struggle for civil rights and the nation's covert fight to defeat it. Through the Shakurs, An Amerikan Family tells the story a small but determined community, taking extreme, unconventional, and often violent measures in the quest for freedom. The story of the Shakurs is the story of America.
