Cultural Literature

Across a range of literary texts, Black writers depict taking flight to escape systems of subordination from the Middle Passage and the plantation to the present-day racialized order. While flight, air, and aviation technologies have long held out the...

Throughout American history, dance and music together have influenced and even been the catalyst for social movements and change. This book delves into how Black and Brown artists (including African American, African Brazilian, Haitian, and Latine...

"All my blessings are the blessings of community." --Octavia Spencer Octavia drove to Los Angeles at twenty-six in search of a career in film. What she found was her chosen family. In this captivating memoir, the Oscar-winning actor and producer recounts...

Some may know her as hot, gutsy, gun-totin' Foxy Brown, Friday Foster, Coffy, and Jackie Brown. Others may know her from her role as Kit Porter on The L Word. But that only defines one part of the legend that is Pam Grier. Foxy is Pam's testimony of her...

The Black Panther Party has responded to the needs of various communities underserved by government agencies by providing social services ranging from food and educational programs to medical care.

Penguin announces a prestigious new series under presiding editor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Many works of history deal with the journeys of blacks in bondage from Africa to the United States along the "middle passage," but there is also a rich and little...

A nationally revered minister and certified grief specialist shares words of comfort for Africans Americans in mourning. Every culture has unique ways of coping with the devastating loss of a loved one, but in some households these important traditions...

In The Reckoning, Randall Robinson examines the crime and poverty that grips much of urban America and urges black Americans to speak out and reach back to ensure their social and economic success in this country. With insight, compassion, and...

Barbara Jordan was the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South, and the first to deliver the keynote address at a national party convention. Yet Jordan herself...

A Bird by Bird for the African-American market--A top-notch writer's guide filled with practical guidance, essays, and journal exercises for the African-American writer including advice from E.Lynn Harris, Charles Johnson, and Yolanda Joe. In her...

In the aftermath of the historic 1993 March on Washington for gay and lesbian rights, Keith Boykin, in One More River to Cross, clarifies the relationship between blacks and gays in America by portraying the "common ground" lives of those who are both...