My Love Letter To Assata Shakur, 1 Year Into Her Ancestry

Dear Ms. Assata Shakur,

A year ago today, we lost you. In the full year that has passed in your absence from the physical realm, your loss is still palpable. As I sat down to write this love letter to you, it occurred to me that this isn’t the first time we have mourned your loss. 

We mourned the loss of you when they locked you away in prison, trying to silence you. We held our breath as you crossed borders, choosing the precarious beauty of exile in Cuba over the theft of your freedom, and quite possibly, your life. 

With each displacement, we had to mourn what could have been. We lost the opportunity to see how your activism might have evolved and changed shape over time. We lost the opportunity to learn from you and grow in close community with you. We lost the chance to see how the daily rhythm of parenting Kakuya would have evolved your teachings, further sharpened your resistance, and expanded and deepened your capacity for radical love.

Grief is a peculiar emotion. I’ve found it never moves in a straight line; instead, it arrives in unpredictable waves that pull us back into the sharpest moments of heartbreak even as parts of ourselves continue to heal. 

In the past year, there have been moments where I’ve slipped into denial about the finality of your passing, my mind trying to convince itself that you are simply still in exile across the ocean. 

Last month, your face flashed on my screen while I was watching a documentary about Black August. We have had so few video interviews of you over the years that seeing you that way rendered me speechless and triggered a cascade of tears. 

Seeing you look so alive broke me. The warmth in your eyes and the cadence of your voice radiated such a deep love for Black people that I crashed straight into denial. My mind convinced itself that you had to still be alive, that maybe you had simply pulled off another strategic border crossing and outsmarted everyone one more time. My mind needed to believe, if only for a brief moment, that it was possible you’d faked your own death just to finally be free in another land, completely out of reach of being hunted. It felt impossible that a brilliant spirit, who loved so deeply and who had so much left to give, could ever truly leave us.

In every chapter of your life, mainstream systems tried to destroy you at worst, or claim pieces of you at best. Through it all, you remained committed to the struggle, to love, and to us. It was clear in how you lived your life that being a warrior for the liberation and salvation of Black people was so deeply entrenched in who you were that it would always be what you chose. Your love for us ran that deep. 

For so long, I held onto a quiet, stubborn hope that one day you would be fully free and that this freedom would come with an apology and an admission from the country that birthed you, that it had gotten it all wrong.

I used to imagine a world after that apology, where you could finally return to the United States without a target on your back. I pictured you stepping off the plane and out into the open air, safe from federal tracking, and no longer having to contend with the realities and toll of living in exile. 

In my mind, your homegoing would start with a beautiful reintegration. You would finally have the chance to hold all the people you found yourself missing during those long decades in exile. You would finally get to enjoy simple joys, like finding comfort in what used to be your favorite food, and living out the soft, unbothered peace you always deserved and never should have had to earn. 

Selfishly, I believed you would write another book, grace the lecture circuit, and keep offering up your decades’ worth of wisdom to generations of Black organizers and revolutionaries. I was naive enough to believe that once an apology was proffered and a pardon granted, you could have lived out the rest of your days here without looking over your shoulder. 

Reality demands that we sift through what we have of you now. We must anchor ourselves to the legacy you left behind through your autobiography and the blueprints you created for Black liberation. It’s now up to all of us to carry your legacy forward.

I often return to your reflections on your education, particularly how this country’s educational system purposely educates us in silos. You recognized that mainstream institutions offer a fragmented, curated version of history designed to preserve their power. You broke out of those narrow slices through your commitment to constant self-education. You are now an integral part of our re-education.

Your warning to “never let our enemies choose our enemies for us” resonates deeply within my core. I see its relevance everywhere, from the broader theater of U.S. politics to international conflicts where fascist regimes, the media, and the broad overreach of corporate America often try to shape our allegiances. 

But I also see it hit home at the hyperlocal level within the Black community, manifesting in colorism and the insidious ways we as Black folks are pitted against one another and criminalized for daring to challenge the power structures that seek to oppress and subjugate us. 

When you wrote about your choice not to become a traditional academic, preferring direct activism because of the vast gulf between abstract theory and daily practice, it struck me deeply. Many moons ago, as I neared the end of my undergraduate studies, I experienced a similar crossroads. 

I had considered becoming an intellectual myself, thinking that academia would provide a premier space to critique and dismantle racism. Ultimately, I chose journalism instead, realizing that telling our stories put me on the front lines, holding power to account. Unearthing our stories and speaking truth to power became my form of resistance, a battleground I continue to choose. 

Telling the truth and fighting for justice has always carried a cost. The most powerful country in the world was so threatened by you and your promise that it mobilized its resources to place you on the Most Wanted list, shifting your realities and further restricting your movement in the new home you built in Cuba. They cast you as an ongoing threat and enemy because your clarity and commitment to us exposed the underbelly of America.

You taught us that freedom is a constant, living practice and commitment. The exhaustion of the hunt is finally over. The borders that confined you have dissolved, and the country that hunted you has nowhere else to go to find you. You are an ancestor now, fully free in every way, holding a space of power that no earthly system can touch or threaten. 

Your death made the distance final in some ways, yet your voice and presence as an ancestor continue to cross it. From this vast, unmappable realm, you can guide us in ways you never could before. Your work reminds us that liberation requires both a burning devotion to our people and the rigorous, exhausting labor of exposing brutal realities and forcing change. Your spirit flows unrestricted through all of us who carry the belief in what you called the fire of love and the sweat in truth. 

Your spirit moves through all of us who carry your work forward. We will keep unearthing truths, loving our people unabashedly, and building towards the freedom you knew was possible and that you gave so much up to fight for.

In solidarity and love,

Nicky

SEE ALSO:

Carrying It On for Assata Shakur, The Embodiment Of Black Liberation

Assata Shakur: They Carried It On And Uplifted Her Name