Hello bookworms!
We are happy to announce that we have completed our second book for the NonFiction Group of the DRUUMM Book Club! Sound the alarm!
Last month, we decided on our third book to read. The book we chose is Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton. This book will take us on a journey through the inner workings of the U.S. prison system utilizing the perspective of Black radical theory.
Our first meeting discussing this book is set for January 25th, 2026 in which we will be discussing Part I of the book. This is pages 1 to 116 in the physical paperback copy.
We are excited to read what will be an informative book on this subject. Hope to see you there!
"Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls.
"Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons—not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility."
The DRUUMM Book Club is for members of DRUUMM only. If you would like to invite a friend to join the book discussion, make sure they are registered with DRUUMM. If you would like to get regular emails regarding book club meetings, please email outreach@druumm.org and say that you would like to be added to the mailing list.
See you on the page,
DRUUMM Book Club
