leynes's Reviews > Tupac: Resurrection, 1971-1996

What a book! The photographs. The handwritten letters, poems and lyrics. The quotes. Per-fucking-fection!

I've been dying to get my hands on this book for a long time and now, by chance, I got it for free. It is a companion book to the brilliant documentary on Tupac Shakur of the same name (Tupac: Resurrection). Reading this book makes a lot more sense when you know the documentary, as the photographs, letters and quotes included in the book are presented without context, i.e. there are no captions or text to guide the reader. Therefore, and because the documentary is amazing, I'd recommend watching it first before jumping into this book, but then, everything will make perfect sense.

This is a bit of a weird book to review because it is 70% pictures and copies of letters, documents and other memorabilia, and 30% quotes from Tupac (from various interviews) that are put in a somewhat chronological sequence, so as to mimic the style of a self-narrated autobiography of sorts. I've found the concept (which was based on ideas of his mother, Afeni Shakur) brilliant because it was very immersive and for a couple of hours, whilst reading this book, I was thrown into Pac's life and could revisit the US in the 70s, 80s and 90s through the lens of a young Black boy and man respectively. It was fascinating.

I love photography. I love street style. This book through its authenticity satisfied me to no end. I loved seeing the pictures of Pac as a baby, toddler and young kid. Seeing what he wore, how he played with his cousins and friends. I also loved seeing the pictures of Afeni (and some of the other Panthers) in the 70s.

It comes as no surprise that my favorite pictures of this book were all from this time: the picture of Pac as a baby (probably the earliest photograph of him that's available to the public), the picture of him as a young boy on the playground (this photograph radiates so much joy, innocence and carefreeness, I could cry ... we all have a picture like that of us in our family photo albums) and all the pictures of him and Jada.

JADA
4 Jada

U R the omega of my heart
The foundation 4 my conception of love
When I think of what a Black woman should be
it's u that I first think of

U will never fully understand
How deeply my heart feels 4 U
I worry that we'll grow apart
and I'll end up losing u

U bring me 2 climax without sex
and u do it all with regal grace
U R my heart in human form
a friend I could never replace

Their relationship is so beautiful to me, and his early death makes me mourn so much for everything they had and would have had for the rest of their lives. The poem he wrote for her as a teenager (a fucking teenager!) is one of the most beautiful friendship/love letters I have ever read in my life. It is so vulnerable, so heartfelt. I really understand why Jada cries whenever she has to talk about Pac during an interview.

Another beautiful thing that Pac later said in an interview about Jada is the following: "Jada's my heart. She will be my friend my whole life. We'll be old together. Jada can ask me to do anything and she can have it. She can have my heart, my liver, my lungs, my kidney, my blood marrow, all of that." Again, it's just beautiful to see how much the two meant to each other. And it's heartbreaking to think that their future together was cut short. Pac will never grow old. His "whole life" was a mere 25 years long. It's hard to wrap one's mind around that!

He also said: "I'm the type of person that could be a good father, a good homie, a good son, and a good man at the same time." The faith he had in his own capabilities, his own life, all his possibilities – it's quotes like these that make me tear up because these were all dreams that never came to fruition.

The book also explores his loving, yet somewhat complicated relationship to his mother, which I loved, because the insights he gives into his upbringing help us understand his drive and his motivation a lot better. He said: "I think that my mother, like Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Harriet Tubman, they felt like they were laying tracks for a generation to come. Somebody has to break out and risk losing everything and being poor and getting beat down; somebody sacrifices."

This sacrifice meant for Pac that he was to grow up without a father (figure), grow up poor, grow up with a mother who spent a lot of time away from home due to her activist work. Being raised by a Black Panther and under these circumstances made him acutely aware of social injustices from an early age. During an interview he gave during his high school years, he demands: "I think there should be a drug class, a sex education class. A real sex education class. A class on police brutality. There should be a class on apartheid. There should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not. There are classes on ... gym. Physical Education. Let's learn Volleyball."

Later, when he was already successful as a rapper he said: "All my songs deal with pain. That's what makes me me, that' what makes me do what I do. Everything is based on the pain I felt in my childhood. Small pieces of it and harsh pieces of it. [...] So I thought, that's what I'm going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they'll stop it quick."

These quotes illustrate how socially conscious and intentional Pac was with his art, and to me, it's clear that all of that can be traced back to his upbringing and his mother. Apart from the poem he wrote about Jada, my other favorite poem that was featured in this book is the poem he wrote for Afeni:

A River That Flows Forever
4 Mother

As long as some suffer
The river flows forever

As long as there is pain
The river flows forever

As strong as a smile can be
The river will flow forever

And as long as U R with me
We'll ride the river together

Similarly to the poem he wrote for Jada, the ingenuity lies in the simplicity. Pac knew what he felt and he knew how to communicate it, how to get straight to the bottom of things. It's no surprise that the songs he wrote for his mother and the women he loved in his life – Dear Mama and Keep Ya Head Up – are amongst my favorite of his entire chronography.

Another thing I immensely appreciated is the fact that many of the letters included in the book were printed as A4 pages and therefore, one could really read what he wrote. His handwriting wasn't the cleanest but I love it nonetheless. I also found it charming to see all the little doodles, his signature and the way he used acronyms in his writing.

In prison, Pac worked on several screenplays and movies, one of which (called "Kindred Spirits") was based on Octavia E. Butler's novel Kindred. I found that fascinating. And it also made me wanna read Butler even more now. In a letter to a friend he wrote: "Instead of complaining about bad movie roles or negative stereotypes I'm writing my own visions." YES, that's the spirit!

He also talked about his sex life in that letter and the relationship "dilemma" he found himself in being torn between two women and boy ... that was some wild shit. I blushed, let me tell you that. My favorite part was probably when he jubilantly wrote: "I still have complete use of every nerve, limb, and muscle and more surprisingly I can still make love and have babies after taking a shot to my scrotum! Talk about faith in God! :)!" LMAO.

In prison, he also wrote a 5-pages long (!) letter to his family in which he proposed that they all collectively invest in a family restaurant, and he even wrote down some ideas for the menu. And that letter was wild af as well because he was pretty patronising on the one hand and told all of them off (even his elders) and then, on the other hand, the plan he came up with was so outlandish and naive, I was like ... ain't nobody gonna say yes to that??? Excuse me, sir?? It was a wild letter and I love that it was included in here.

Lastly, I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the entire book because it so beautifully illustrates Pac's way with words and his clever use of analogies when it comes to making himself (and the plight of his people) heard: "If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over; I mean, just throwing food around [and] they're telling me there’s no food. Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: "We are hungry, please let us in. We are hungry, please let us in." After about a week that song is gonna change to, "We hungry, we need some food." After two, three weeks, it's like, "Give me the food or I'm breaking down the door." After a year you're just like, "I'm picking the lock, coming through the door blasting!" It's like, you hungry, you reached your level. We asked ten years ago. We was asking with the Panthers. We was asking with the Civil Rights Movement. We was asking. Those people that asked are dead and in jail. So now what do you think we're gonna do? Ask?" BOOM.