AN AMERIKAN FAMILY: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created, by Santi Elijah HolleyIn 1994, Tupac Shakur gave a stirring interview to MTV about his career and penchant for controversy. Shakur grew up poor and embedded in a Black revolutionary family. He was not always angry, but he insisted Black rage was logical: America exploited and persecuted Black people, extracting talented survivors like him from the ghetto, and condemning those left behind to violence and early death. “I’m not saying I’m going to rule the world, or I’m going to change the world,” he said. 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.

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