Product Description

The now-classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience.

By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #226685 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-12
• Released on: 1999-01-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"A collection of essays straight out of Dante's Inferno. The hell is there, and its name is America...as with Malcolm X, Cleaver's book is a spiritual autobiography. An odyssey of a soul in search of itself, groping toward a personal humanism which will give meaning to life...the book is important...the book is extraordinary."—Shane Stevens, The Progressive

"A remarkable book...beautifully written...Eldridge Cleaver makes you twist and flinch...he throws light on the dark areas that we wish he would leave alone."—The Nation

"Brilliant and revealing."—New York Times Book Review

"All the essays [in Soul on Ice] deal with racial hurt, racial struggle, and racial pride...Eldridge Cleaver is a promising and powerful writer, an intelligent and turbulent and passionate and eloquent man."—Robert Coles, Atlantic Monthly

Ingram
Finally back in print, the prison memoirs of Black Panther activist Eldridge Cleaver that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the Black experience. "Brilliant and revealing."--New York Times Book Review.

From the Publisher
The searingly honest memoirs of the man who shocked, outraged and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement remain today as a testament to the man's intelligence, insightfulness, and place in American history.

Customer Reviews

About half of this book is brilliant and the other half . . .
This is still one of the most important books of its era. It is very enlightening on such topics as racism suffered by Blacks in America, particulary Black males. If you want to know about the injustices that Black people have suffered around the 1960s, then you must read this book. But Cleaver's attempt to justify rape as a "revolutionary" act causes him to lose credibilty and also causes his cause to lose credibilty. This book would have been more powerful if Cleaver would have accepted responsibility for his crime, realizing rape cannot and never will be justifified.

Justification for the Unjustifiable
I have seldom read anything as offensive as Cleaver's attempt to pass off rape as a "revolutionary" act. By his own admission he is a serial rapist,and if he'd served time for all of them would never even have been out of jail in the sixties in the first place! While the other content of this book isn't totally worthless, I found that Cleaver came off as a typical criminal, filled with reasons why SOMEBODY ELSE was responsible for everything he did wrong. The first step to self respect is to accept responsibility for one's actions, Cleaver has not done that, nor does he give the slightest indication that he ever will. If you want to read an autobiography of a panther read Huey Newton's, because with Newton, instead of self pity, there was substance and intelligence behind the anger.

a challenging piece of work
This autobiography upsetted alot of people, generally people who could not identify with what it was to be a young African American man post-civil rights. Cleaver reveals this to us, exposing even his own faults, the psychological enslavement of African America, and the reality of how it plays out in society. Despite those that believe that this book pertains only to this era are obviously blind to the fact that many of the same issues then exist today. What makes it worse is that many people are unaware of it now, the gimmicks of media and political correctness have only mastered camouflaging it. When I read this book, I cried, not just for my people during that era, but for my own children who will grow up in the same environment but not know it until it is too late.

"Dont Believe the Hype!"- Public Enemy, 1987 AD.