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The Exile Of Assata Shakur: Marronage And American Borders, Joe Kaplan

History Theses

Former Black Panther, Assata Shakur, now living in exile in Cuba after breaking out of a U.S. prison, is a self-described escaped slave, or maroon. Shakur has adopted this identity to underscore how practices and ideologies developed under slavery continue to structure Black life in the Americas, and how resistance strategies produced by this historical milieu remain salient in critiques of modern U.S. state power. The transnational nature of Shakur’s flight points to the use of borders as a highly effective, yet overlooked, tactic of Black resistance that has both historical and contemporary relevance. For maroons, borders mark hard distinctions …