Chapters 1 and 2 Summary and Analysis

This book is an autobiography of Assata Shakur, a black revolutionary who is now living in Cuba, where she has political asylum. The book tells the often shocking yet inspiring story of Assata's life up to her arrest and eventual escape to Cuba.

In chapter one, the narrator has been shot. The police are everywhere and trying to decide if they should kill her. An ambulance arrives and the narrator is put in it; she passes out. Upon awaking, she finds herself in a hospital, surrounded by white people. She is examined and fingerprinted, and no one seems to care if she lives or dies. They repeatedly ask her why she shot the trooper, but she does not respond. She is repeatedly examined and threatened but refuses to tell the police anything. The narrator is moved to a large...