American Notes REVOLUTIONARIES

Eight years after her escape from a New Jersey prison, where she was serving a life term in the killing of a state trooper, Black Revolutionary JoAnne Chesimard surfaced in Cuba last week to plug her upcoming book, Assata: An Autobiography (Lawrence Hill & Co.; $18.95). Chesimard, 40, was once dubbed by police the "mother hen" of the Black Liberation Army, a radical sect that staged bank robberies in the New York area. In Havana, she told the Long Island newspaper Newsday that the Castro government supports her and her 13- year-old daughter Kakuya while Chesimard studies for a master's degree in social science.

Chesimard's 274-page autobiography is heavy on childhood reminiscences, light on revolutionary activities and sprinkled with references to cops as "pigs." But television and movie deals are in the offing. "It makes me angry to think a person like Chesimard would want to profit from the capitalist enterprise that she wants to overthrow," said New Jersey State Police Superintendent Clinton Pagano.