Assata: An Autobiography

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Assata Shakur's 1987 autobiography (Lawrence Hill Books / Zed). Black Liberation Army member, former Black Panther Party member, convicted in 1977 of the May 2, 1973 killing of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster on the New Jersey Turnpike after a confrontation that left Assata wounded and fellow BLA member Zayd Malik Shakur dead. Sentenced to life in New Jersey state prison; escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in November 1979 and surfaced in Cuba in 1984, where she received political asylum from Fidel Castro. The autobiography was written from Cuba, recounting her organizing life, the trial, her treatment in custody, and the political theory of the Black Liberation Army. Among the most widely-distributed prison-survivor autobiographies of the post-Civil Rights generation. Assata died in Cuba in September 2025; this autobiography is the canonical first-person account.