UCLA

“A Poetic Revolution: Ericka Huggins, Narrative Resistance, and Erotic Power” is a historical and cultural study that broadens our understanding of the Black freedom movement by examining the conspiracy case and prison writing of former Black Panther Ericka Huggins. Using an archival research approach, I examine primary source materials that includes the State v. Seale and Huggins transcript, newspaper articles, interviews, autobiographies, organizational documents, and government records in order to conceptualize the ways in which Black women who imagined themselves as revolutionary freedom fighters asserted agency and resisted dominant narratives of race and gender during the Black Power era. Layering in cultural studies theories that look to Black women’s artistic expression as critical sites of resistance and freedom dreaming, I approach Huggins’ witness testimony and poetry from prison through the lens of Audre Lorde’s articulation of the erotic as a divinely feminine power source and space through which we might envision a more pleasurable future for Black people across the diaspora.