Words for My Comrades

Featured on NPR's Books We Love 2025

'An astounding achievement' MARCUS J. MOORE
'Learned [and] compassionate' THE TIMES
'A must-read' IRISH TIMES

Before his murder at twenty-five, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the pre-eminent storyteller of the 1990s. He recorded several platinum-selling albums, starred in major films and became an activist and political hero known the world over. In this extraordinary cultural history, Dean Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac's coming of age, fame and influence and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a icon.

Drawing upon conversations with the people who bore witness, Words for My Comrades tells the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by consumer culture - and how America produced, in Tupac and his Black Panther mother Afeni, two of its most iconic revolutionaries.