Eldridge Cleaver is best known for Soul on Ice, a collection of essays written largely while he was in prison and published during the rise of the Black Power movement. The book combines autobiography, political argument, reflections on race and masculinity, literary criticism and accounts of Cleaver’s own violent crimes. His later life included leadership in the Black Panther Party, exile, ideological shifts and eventual movement away from some of his earlier positions. Because Soul on Ice contains both influential political writing and disturbing attempts to rationalise sexual violence, it requires critical reading rather than treatment as uncomplicated movement history. Soul on Ice is most useful when read critically beside other Black Panther and civil-rights writing, since its political importance, prison perspective and treatment of race sit alongside passages that attempt to rationalise serious sexual violence. Read more Less
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