Eldridge Cleaver: Ice and Fire

This is a brief and sketchy account of Eldridge Cleaver's life up until 1977, by which time he had become a born-again Christian. It's written in hacky, journalistic prose and, given that it's about somebody's spiritual journey, it's curiously unreflective: the Christianity purveyed is trite and banal and lacking in depth. It's also mundanely teleological, portraying Cleaver's life as ineluctably leading towards his becoming a Christian. The author, George Otis, caricatures the Panthers, presenting them in an almost entirely negative light, and is always eager to take the police point of view on things. Otis thinks it unlikely that there was any concerted covert state programme to destabilise the Panthers, a judgement history has not been kind to. The book deserves a star, though, for charting the journey of an American (albeit black) radical who, through enforced exile, came to realise that the communist and socialist regimes he idolised from a distance were more repressive to live under than the United States he had thought so fascist and totalitarian. Being a right-wing Christian, Otis doesn't mention homophobia as one of the distasteful attitudes Cleaver oozed in his Soul On Ice manifestation. I daresay that it's one attitude that will have continued on without transformation into his new born-again life.