Preface to the 2020 edition by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Foreword by Cornel West
Preface by Julia Wright
To the Reader by Steve Wiser
A Write-up for Writing
Books and the State
Capital Punishment
Remembering Moser
Politics
The Search
Thoughts on the Divine
Night of Power
Material Life
Life’s Religion
Isn’t It Odd?
Spirit War
Imprisonment
Christian? Christ-like?
Miracles
The Faith of Slaves
Hope
Salt of the Earth
Community
Men of the Cloth
Hate’s Unkind Counsel
Human Beings
The Spider
The Fall
Children
The Creator
Father Hunger
Mother-loss
Meeting with a Killer
Dialogue
Objectivity and the Media
Violence
God-talk on Phase II
Meditations on the Cross
Holiday Thoughts
The Wisdom of John Africa
Untitled (poem)
More War for the Poor
Of Becoming
A Call to Action
Interview with Mumia
Appendix: Amnesty International: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Endnotes
About the Author
TO THOSE
nameless ones who came before
and are no more,
to those who leapt
to dark, salty depths,
to those who battled
against all odds,
to those who would give birth
to gods,
to those who would not yield—
To those who came before,
to those who are to come,
I dedicate this shield.
M.A.J.
PREFACE TO THE 2020 EDITION
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Imagine knowing that you will soon die.
Imagine not only knowing the exact date your life will end, but that you will die an unnatural death.
Imagine knowing that you will be deliberately killed by the authorities of the state in which you live.
Imagine, if you can, that you were shot by police, arrested, tortured, jailed, and sentenced to be executed as a result of court proceedings that Amnesty International declared were “in violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty.”
Imagine spending your last days alone inside a small prison cell in a hellish place called death row.
What would you think about as the clock ticked down on you?
What would you dream?
What would you hope?
How would you make sense of the things you heard, saw, and felt as the date of your execution neared?
To read this book, one of my first literary endeavors, a generation after its tumultuous birth, is to experience the smells of fear, trepidation, and the genuine threat of execution that I lived with as a forced inhabitant of Pennsylvania’s death row.
But against the canvas of unfreedom, death, and barbarity portrayed in the pages ahead, aspects of our humanity blossom into relief. Such is the intention of this book. For Death Blossoms is, above all, a meditation on the faith of the oppressed.
Such faith may take many forms, but all are shaped and informed by resilience against oppression. It thus utilizes the voices, dreams, and poetics of the oppressed to imagine freedom. To understand that faith, we swim to the lowest depths of society and find, to our surprise, the beating of a multitude of hearts—the cris de cœur—of those sentenced to the nothingness of death row in all its awfulness and all its awesomeness.
Who can forget the
