An Abolitionist's Handbook

June 1, 2022

Black Lives Matter cofounder Cullors's guide encourages listeners to follow 12 clearly outlined steps filled with bold and innovative action in order to become everyday activists. The audiobook opens with a foreword written and read by writer and activist adrienne maree brown and an introduction read by the author. Each detailed step includes suggested courses of action and inspirational narrative examples, both intentional and spontaneous, of activists from the past. To reach the ultimate goal of abolition requires measures such as turning actions away from reaction and toward response, making justice joyful, and organizing governments to work toward abolition at all levels. Guiding questions are included at the end of each chapter. The audio closes with a conversation featuring the author and brown. Narrator Ariel Blake brings a fresh, youthful voice and tone to this powerful audiobook, reading with authority, dignity, care, and respect, and making excellent use of pacing and pauses, word emphasis, and volume. This is an impassioned reading, more like a lecture or speech before an engaged crowd. VERDICT Listeners will want to stop and listen to this again and again in order to internalize the content.--Stephanie Bange

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 16, 2021
Cullors (When They Call You a Terrorist), a cofounder of the Black Lives Matter movement, delivers an accessible if diffuse guide to “abolitionist practice.” According to Cullors, abolition “centers on getting rid of prisons, jails, police, courts and surveillance,” but also includes the fight for improved water quality in cities and a more equal distribution of streaming revenue for musicians (“If there is any part of your life where you are trying to get free, it connects to abolitionist practice”). She draws on her personal life and activist experiences to offer advice on how to have “courageous conversations” about difficult subjects, and how to “imagin beyond the status quo” of “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Elsewhere, she recounts the actions she took as a high school guidance counselor when a student alleged that a teacher was sexually abusing another student. In addition to notifying the authorities, Cullors informed the perpetrator of the accusation and offered to talk to him about it (she never heard back), and created discussion groups for faculty and students to learn about restorative justice. Though Cullors broadens the scope of “abolition” so far that the concept begins to lose some of its meaning, her guidance on how to achieve personal and social transformation is enlightening. Readers will be inspired to take action.