Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤'s Reviews > When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

"This is what that cop did to him. He shot bullets into the top of his head as he knelt on the ground with his hands up."

In a perfect world, this book would not have been written. It would not have been written because it wouldn't have needed to be written. In a perfect world, there would be no Black Lives Matter movement. There would be no such movement because Black lives truly would matter. In a perfect world, there would be no inequality, injustice, hatred, or violence. There would be no need to stand up and demand equality and justice, to demand respect, dignity, and safety. People would not be denied these things merely because of the colour of their skin. But we do not live in a perfect world.

When They Call You a Terrorist is a powerful memoir by co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Khan-Cullors. It is a book I wish every person would read. Patrisse writes openly and movingly about her childhood, growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in LA where she was often hungry even though her mother worked 3 jobs. Where police patrolled their neighborhood, treating them all, even the little children, as though they were terrorists and thugs. Where she watched her mentally ill brother be taken by police, thrown into a prison where he was abused and tortured. Where young black men and boys were routinely rounded up and thrown into the vast prison-industry where human rights do not exist, especially not if you're Black or Brown. She chronicles the experiences, often traumatic, that led her to become an activist, that led her to create Black Lives Matter. She tells of the early days of the movement, and talks about many, many of the black lives that have been stolen, the women and men and children who were murdered because of the colour of their skin. She tells us why we need Black Lives Matter.

I cried many times reading this book. Tears of compassion and tears of anger. We are in desperate need of change in this country. We cannot, we MUST NOT, allow the atrocities that take place daily all over this country, to continue to happen. White people cannot stand by any longer and let our sisters and brothers be murdered, merely because they have more melanin in their skin. We must become enraged and demand that change happens, but in order to do this we first need to educate ourselves about what exactly it is like to be a person of colour in America.

This book focuses on many of the issues and injustices Michelle Alexander wrote about in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This book is more personal, but equally important. If you don't understand the need for the Black Lives Matter movement, please, PLEASE!, read this book!

I don't usually quote other books when writing a review of another, but the following lines from Leslé Honoré's brilliant Fist & Fire: Poems that Inspire Action and Ignite Passion kept coming to mind whilst reading this book:

""When you say to me
all lives matter
I simply ask
will your son die with the world on his back
mine will."