Soledad Brother (book)
Soledad Brother is a collection of letters written by George Jackson while he was incarcerated in Soledad State Prison and San Quentin State Prison. In addition to containing autobiographical details from Jackson's life, the letters give a harsh appraisal of the American prison system, and express strong condemnation of racism and capitalism in the United States.
When the book was published on October 1, 1970, Jackson had already served nearly ten years for being an accessory to armed robbery of $71 from a Los Angeles gas station. He was nationally known at the time as one of the three "Soledad Brothers"—along with Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette—who were awaiting trial for the January 1970 murder of Soledad corrections officer John Vincent Mills.
The book was a bestseller and brought Jackson enthusiastic attention from other prison inmates and from leftist organizers and intellectuals in the U.S. and Europe. The French writer Jean Genet supplied an introduction to the book's first edition. Soledad Brother sold more than 400,000 copies and was reissued in 1994 by Lawrence Hill Books.
Description
George Jackson dedicates Soledad Brother to his younger brother Jonathan ; to his mother Georgia Bea; and to his close friend and political comrade Angela Davis. The first letter in the book is a lengthy autobiographical account that Jackson wrote at the request of his editor, Greg Armstrong, who wanted readers to have background information to better understand the subsequent letters to Jackson's family and friends.The next section includes letters that Jackson wrote to his parents between June 1964 and December 1969. His correspondence with his father Robert reveals a running "conversation-argument" between a revolutionary son and a conservative father, which Suzannah Lessard characterized as "the struggle between two generations of black Americans—those who would cast their lot with the system despite its abuses and the spiritual cost, and those who find the black role in the society intolerable—worse than imprisonment, worse than death." At one point, Jackson writes:
In the dozen letters to his lawyer Fay Stender, Jackson often describes prison conditions:
In another letter to Stender, he writes:
Jackson's radical political views are expressed in several of the letters, for example:
The letters frequently showcase Jackson's wide reading in literature, political philosophy, and history. For instance, he concludes a letter to his younger sister Frances by saying, "I must now start doing all that is humanly possible to get out of prison. I can see great ill forecast for me if I don't find some way to extract myself from these people's control." He then pours forth to her without line breaks the entirety of Claude McKay's 1919 sonnet "If We Must Die" before signing off:
Critical reception
In a New York Times book review, Julius Lester called Soledad Brother "the most important single volume from a black since The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and its impact among blacks may be even greater, particularly in light of the recent and growing number of rebellions inside prisons."In her Washington Monthly review, Suzannah Lessard compared Soledad Brother to Eldridge Cleaver's bestselling prison memoir Soul on Ice :