Claudine Raynaud, « Memoirs from #BLM era »

The #BLM movement has led to the publication of a plethora of autobiographical texts to the extent that Imani Perry called 2016 “The Year of Black Memoir.” Indeed, novelists, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jesmyn Ward, and Kiese Laymon, the poetess Claudia Rankine, but also activists and journalists produced texts to account for that specific nationwide mobilization for social justice and against police brutality. A domestic struggle at its inception, the movement achieved international proportions and still has global repercussions thanks to the social networks. Drawing on the theoretical work on militant memoirs and African American autobiographical writing, this paper addresses When They Call You a Terrorist. A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018), by one of the leaders of the movement, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Unapologetic. A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (2018) by Charlene Carruthers. Carruthers is the head of the Black Youth Project 100, created in 2013 in answer to Zimmerman’s acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin (U 116).