The collected political writings of the woman the Black liberation struggle claimed as their “John Brown,” tracing Marilyn Buck’s life as a freedom fighter, a political prisoner, and a poet, and offering a model of revolutionary solidarity

Marilyn Buck spent nearly half her life in prison for aiding in Assata Shakur’s escape and other crimes, convicted of what the US Department of Justice called a “conspiracy to protest, oppose, and change policies and practices of the US government in domestic and international matters using violent and illegal means.”

This collection of Marilyn’s writing traces her political development from solidarity with the Black Panthers of the 1960s through her years underground and in prison, offering a glimpse of how she struggled to survive as an activist and as a human being while incarcerated. Moving deftly between manifestos and meditations, Militant for Life illuminates her fierce convictions while also evoking the love and loyalty she had for her fellow prisoners and freedom fighters, and the love and loyalty they had for her in return.

Decades after her death, Marilyn’s words still stand as an essential challenge to those who would accuse her, as we see for many activists today, of being a “terrorist”——and offer a spiky, irresistible archive of activist thought for those determined to defy racism and authoritarianism in our own time.