Reading the book, one searches for some other emergent nation, one imagined by generations of Black revolutionaries, solid in its constitution and aims: safety, dignity and self-determination for Black people … The Panther 21 trial is the book’s opening subject, and it sets a standard for drama that seems impossible to sustain. But the cast of characters expands, and somehow each one the reader encounters is as compelling as the last … This is a dizzying and comprehensive clan to write about, and the book reflects that dizziness at times. Holley introduces key figures and then returns to them later in ways that sometimes make it complex to discern how much influence they had on the events discussed … Not presented as a definitive family biography, yet it succeeds in depicting as revealing and inclusive a portrait of the Shakurs as we have seen. For all the intimacy and richness of detail provided by Holley’s admirable archival work and interviews, there is room for more engagement with the ideas and arguments the Shakurs advanced … The ideas the Shakurs advanced remain as relevant as ever, but An Amerikan Family offers no romantic assurance that the Shakurs’ legacy in politics or music will live on exactly as they intended. Instead, it provides readers with a visceral and unsanitized account of the Black liberation struggle as a material and often lawless battle between the American government and Black people who refuse to be trampled upon.
