It was interesting to read the three different prefaces Davis has written for the three different editions of her autobiography. It’s probably not surprising that the most recent one has her at her analytical and incisive best. I wonder if she’ll ever expand her autobiography or if there was even a temptation to revise what she’d written.
The autobiography itself is definitely worth reading, more for accounts of specific moments in her political development than for the sections of sweeping summary. In the latter, the prose kind of flattens out. But her explanations of her own intellectual development, her stories about her travels, specific protests, and, of course, her own trial, are all quite compelling.
And Toni Morrison edited it. Can you imagine the two of them talking?
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