Cultural Literature

From the New York Times contributing opinion writer and award-winning author of Reading While Black, a riveting intergenerational account of his family's search for home and hope For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an...

A Black Minneapolis cop and inner-city football coach faces racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd inflames his city and forces him to explore the tensions in the neighborhood where he grew up. Charles Adams is a product of the Minneapolis's...

America was founded on the concept of the innate and inalienable rights of humankind. Many Christians see an echo of the imago Dei--that every human being carries the image of God--within those ideals. Yet these rights were systemically withheld from the...

Tiona Nekkia McClodden considers the presence and absence of the Black figure and aesthetic tropes of representation through work traversing film, installation, sculpture, painting, and writing. "An artist who may be America's most essential today."...

Born in slavery in Maryland in 1817, Frederick Douglass escaped from servitude twenty years later, joined the ranks of abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and John Brown, and devoted a long and fruitful life to the winning of...

American artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) revolutionized contemporary portraiture with his vivid depictions of Black subjects beginning in the late 1960s. This book contextualizes Hendricks's portraits at different stages of the country's history...

This landmark two-volume anthology chronicles more than thirty tumultuous years in the African American struggle for freedom and equal rights. Here, in brilliant and inspiring dispatches from some of the finest reporters in the history of American...

Designed as a companion to the hugely successful monograph Noah Davis, this volume offers further insight into the impact and legacy of the revolutionary Los Angeles artist and activist. "Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary...

The late Grammy-winning founder of the legendary pop/R&B/soul/funk/disco group tells his story and charts the rise of his legendary band in this sincere memoir that captures the heart and soul of an artist whose groundbreaking sound continues to...

"Aisha Harris is one of our smartest, most entertaining modern cultural critics. The nine pieces offer insight on Stevie Wonder, the Spice Girls, Pen15, and New Girl--among many other pop artifacts, of course--which might as well be parlance for, 'Read...

A New Statesman 'most anticipated title of the year' 2022 'Compelling.' David Lammy MP A powerful intervention roundly debunking the myth of progress in racial equality -- particularly in the workplace -- and offering a blueprint for the future. Have...

A stirring, intimate reflection on the nature of race and American nationhood that has inspired generations of writers and thinkers, first published in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington "The finest essay I've ever read."--Ta-Nehisi Coates,...

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural...

"You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people." The New York Times bestselling author of Race Matters and Democracy Matters offers provocative, open-hearted wisdom for our times. In a...

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop and watching action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered...