Cultural Literature

Celebrates the expansive creativity of Black artists who have contributed to the rich fabric of abstraction through artworks in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This beautifully illustrated volume reveals the...

A Black Renaissance WomanRenaissance Woman uncovers the remarkable life and legacy of Louise E. Jefferson, a trailblazing Black creative whose work left a deep yet overlooked impact on art and culture in the 20th century. As one of the first female and...

We Rode the Rhythms as One offers readers an immersive journey into the life and legacy of one of America's most unorthodox and inspiring poets. More than just a literary analysis, this book captures the pulse of Etheridge Knight's life, weaving together...

As a member of the integrated Women's Army Corps, Private First Class Sarah Keys served her country as a receptionist at Fort Dix, New Jersey. When she boarded a bus home to North Carolina in 1952, she never expected to be arrested and charged with...

Writing alongside the specter of premature death, Tisa Bryant traces the contours of Black women's interior lives and domestic spaces through meditations on literature, cinema, installations, and archival research to reaffirm her own way of being.In the...

A revolutionary work of erasure poetry that exposes the contradictions in Thomas Paine's Common Sense--calling for a new definition of citizenship that embraces all Americans In his famous cry for inhabitants of the thirteen colonies to seek independence...

As a member of the integrated Women's Army Corps, Private First Class Sarah Keys served her country as a receptionist at Fort Dix, New Jersey. When she boarded a bus home to North Carolina in 1952, she never expected to be arrested and charged with...

An illustrated history that celebrates the legacy of Black actors, films, and filmmakers from the silent era through today and explores the deeply embedded racism of the film industry, from the award-winning author of The Black Panther Party In Black...

Never before has the disturbing story of blackface and its piercing reflection of American society been so comprehensively told. Darkology, from Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes, meticulously unravels this complex, subterranean, and all-too-often...

The award-winning co-anchor of PBS NewsHour presents a sweeping and insightful retrospective on the history of Black comedy in America.Black comedians have long played a pivotal role in shaping the American sense of humor. The 1990s showcased a golden...

A magisterial, groundbreaking new study of the lives of enslaved Americans on the cusp of the Civil War that places them--and their hard-won political knowledge--rightly at the center of the fight for freedom The enduring image of American slavery has...

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - A powerful, incisive reckoning with the impacts of school desegregation that traces four generations of the author's family to show how the implementation of integration decimated Black school systems and...