Cultural Literature

Probing, entertaining and agitating.--Essence By the acclaimed and controversial author of Why Black People Tend to Shout, this is an unblinking look at African-American life, including explosive essays on education, Rodney King, multiculturalism, and...

THIS RICHLY INFORMATIVE JOURNEY INTO THE 1970S CAPTURES THE EXPLOSIVE POWER OF THE BLACK PERFORMERS, MUSICIANS, FILMMAKERS, AND ATHLETES WHO IGNITED A CULTURAL REVOLUTION. WHAT SINGER/SONGWRITER WAS THE FIRST WHITE PERFORMER TO APPEAR ON SOUL TRAIN?WHAT...

Apartheid isn't over--so Malaika Wa Azania boldly argues in Memoirs of a Born Free, her account of growing up black in modern-day South Africa. Malaika was born in late 1991, as the white minority government was on its way out, making her a Born...

Cleveland's Gospel Music documents the history of black gospel music from the 1920s through the 1980s. The gospel quartet groups, radio announcers, solo artists, and promoters established Cleveland as the gospel singers' metropolitan hub. An integral...

In the tradition of James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, Robeson's A Black Way of Seeing melds history and analysis in a sweeping panorama of the present moment as we know it to be--scathing in its understanding of why Black empowerment has failed and...

Explore accounts of Oklahoma's Freedmen as told by their descendants in these stories of resistance and resilience on the Western frontier.The Freedmen of Oklahoma were black people, both enslaved and free, who had been living among the Indian nations...

Black theology's addressing of economic poverty in the Black neighborhoods and communities of the United States gives substantive reasoning to the fact that Black poverty is a theological problem. In connecting the narrative of idolatry to the...

Life is never easy, but there are times when it feels like everything is against you. Tyra Hodge grew up feeling the world's weight pressing down on her. A nagging feeling awakened, whispering how she would never amount to anything the older she got...

Life is never easy, but there are times when it feels like everything is against you. Tyra Hodge grew up feeling the world's weight pressing down on her. A nagging feeling awakened, whispering how she would never amount to anything the older she got...

The American mental health system is in crisis, and those affected by its shortcomings are drowning without the tools and resources they deserve and need to thrive. In Born Into Crisis, author Kenneth Nixon shares his story of growing up with a mother...

The astounding, never-before-told story of how an audacious Ghanaian con artist pulled off one of the 20th century's longest-running and most spectacular frauds.When Ghana won its independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for...

Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays,...