Cultural Literature

Alcoholic. Epileptic. Technically challenged. Jimmy Reed nevertheless overcame these roadblocks to become perhaps the most successful R&B/pop cross-over artist of the '50s with songs like Big Boss Man and Bright Lights, Big City. Musicians, family...

Sitting just south of the nation's capital, Alexandria has a long and storied history. Still, little is known of Alexandria's twentieth-century African American community. Experience the harrowing narratives of trials and triumph as Alexandria's African...

The media tends to portray Africa in a manner that grossly distorts reality. The picture they paint is intended to make people of African descent feel ashamed of their past and their identity. This is unacceptable and must change. It is therefore a moral...

The most comprehensive survey to date of the contemporary artist Whitfield Lovell, whose poetic and intricately crafted tableaux and installations document and pay tribute to the history and cultural memory of the African American experience. Whitfield...

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.--Howard Thurman Known as the godfather of the civil rights movement, Howard Thurman served as a spiritual adviser to...

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was...

Fox and Rob have a family motto: "If it's not facing 297 years in prison, it's not a problem." The 21 years that kept Rob apart from Fox and their family of six sons was long enough. And it was love that carried them through two decades of uncertainty as...

The revered civil rights activist and pioneering member of Congress chronicles her groundbreaking 1972 run for President as the first woman and person of color--a work of immense historical importance that both captures and transcends its times, newly...

A journey through sound, memory, and landscapes, questioning the origins, perception, and cultural implications of music. A lifelong relation to sound and music underlies Latifa Echakhch's work. On the occasion of her representation of the Swiss Pavilion...

With Speech Is My Hammer, Max Hunter draws on memoir and his own biography to call his readers to reimagine the meaning and power in literacy. Defining literacy as a "spectrum of skills, abilities, attainments, and performances," Hunter focuses on...

Have you always admired women with flowing hair? Do you long for a wash-and-go style? In Nice Dreads, Lonnice Brittenum Bonner, the author of the classic Good Hair, shares her secrets and personal stories about dreadlocks--from cultivating buds to...