From my list on understand why, as Mao said, “revolution is not a dinner party”.
Why am I passionate about this?
I became passionate about this subject when I was at university and I realised that so many revolutions that were conducted in the name of high ideals ended up involving considerable suffering and death on the part of the ordinary people. And not just the ordinary people, but the revolutionaries as well. Why, I wondered, was this the case, and did it mean, as many in the 1960s and 1970s argued, that revolution was ultimately self-defeating? The quest to answer these questions remains on-going, but the books I have suggested have helped me to make some headway towards a resolution.
Graeme's book list on understand why, as Mao said, “revolution is not a dinner party”
Why did Graeme love this book?
This book is a classic of the anti-colonial struggles of the middle of the twentieth century and was important for many of the revolutionaries of that time. It is written with passion and verve and carried me along on the revolutionary adventure.
It reflects a burning commitment to socialist revolutionary change, which stands in stark contrast to much contemporary politics and roots this in an argument about the psychological implications of imperialism. A stimulating discussion, and one which still generates much argument and dispute.
6 authors picked The Wretched of the Earth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on…