The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of...

Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic...

“Grieve well and you grow stronger.” Anthropologist Rebecca Louise Carter heard this wisdom over and over while living in post-Katrina New Orleans, where everyday violence disproportionately affects Black communities. What does it mean to grieve well?...

How black writers’ travel to Paris contributed to the transatlantic circulation of art and ideas.Paris has always fascinated and welcomed writers. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, writers of American, Caribbean, and African...

Profound meditations on life, death, freedom, family, and faith, written by radical Black journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, while he was awaiting his execution. "Uncompromising, disturbing . . . Abu-Jamal''s voice has the clarity and candor of a man whose...

Mutilated, dying, or dead, black men play a role in the psychic life of culture. From national dreams to media fantasies, there is a persistent imagining of what black men must be. This book explores the legacy of that role, particularly its violent...

Most histories of the Civil Rights Movement start with all the players in place--among them organized groups of African Americans, White Citizens' Councils, nervous politicians, and religious leaders struggling to find the right course. Anderson,...

A unique and irreverent take on everything that's wrong with our “national conversation about race”—and what to do about itHow to Be Less Stupid About Race is your essential guide to breaking through the half-truths and ridiculous misconceptions that...

A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian...

“Fascinating and instructive...King’s philosophy, speaking to us through the written word, may turn out to constitute his most enduring legacy.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of BooksMartin Luther King, Jr., is one of America’s most revered...

When and Where I Enter is an eloquent testimonial to the profound influence of African-American women on race and women's movements throughout American history. Drawing on speeches, diaries, letters, and other original documents, Paula Giddings...

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of...

In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. Always concerned with the...

"This book will change you." --Chicago TribuneWhite Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Eminem, Louise Brooks, and Michael Jackson...

This magisterial follow-up to the Grawemeyer Award-winning The New Abolition explores the black social gospel's crucial second chapter "Magnificent . . . Breaking White Supremacy interweaves histories of families and institutions, of the black church...

In Black Feminism Reimagined Jennifer C. Nash reframes black feminism's engagement with intersectionality, often celebrated as its primary intellectual and political contribution to feminist theory. Charting the institutional history and contemporary...

Winner of the John Hope Franklin PrizeA Moyers & Company Best Book of the Year“A brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us.”—Darryl Pinckney, New York Review of BooksHow did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? A...

Winner of the Stone Book Award, Museum of African American HistoryWinner of the Joan Kelly Memorial PrizeWinner of the Littleton-Griswold PrizeWinner of the Mary Nickliss PrizeWinner of the Willie Lee Rose PrizeAmericans have long viewed marriage between...

White supremacists determined what African Americans could do and where they could go in the Jim Crow South, but they were less successful in deciding where black people could live because different groups of white supremacists did not agree on the...

How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they...