Cultural Literature

This is the first comprehensive selection from the correspondence of the iconic and beloved Langston Hughes. It offers a life in letters that showcases his many struggles as well as his memorable achievements. Arranged by decade and linked by expert...

Reggie Love is a unique witness to history, whose introduction to Washington was working in Junior Senator Barack Obama's mailroom. As "body man" to Obama during his first presidential campaign, Love's job was to stay one step behind the candidate, but...

Picture a ballerina in a tutu and toe shoes. What does she look like?" As the only African American soloist dancing with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland has made history. But when she first placed her hands on the barre at an...

Dr. Yvonne Thornton, author of the heartwarming memoir The Ditchdigger's Daughters (which has been translated into 19 languages and adapted as an award-winning movie), knows what it's like to overcome steep odds. Born into a family with great ambition...

Andrea Stuart was born and raised in the Caribbean. She studied English at the University of East Anglia and French at the Sorbonne. Her book "The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine" was published in the United States in 2004, has been...

"[Stanton] takes us into her survival mode on the streets, and adjustments she had to make in her home life. The author shares experiences of her teen years, growing up in Buffalo, NY. She leads us on a short stay as a young girl in Greensboro, NC. The...

Decoded is a book like no other: a collection of lyrics and their meanings that together tell the story of a culture, an art form, a moment in history, and one of the most provocative and successful artists of our time.Praise for Decoded "Compelling . . ...

Dubbed "the Hip-Hop Intellectual" by critics and fans for his pioneering explorations of rap music in the academy and beyond, Dyson probes the most compelling and controversial dimensions of hip-hop culture. Whether along race, class or generational...

Robinson explores the singularly curious and inimitable tragic history of the island nation of Haiti, beginning with the present anarchic disrepair of it modern state. From one revolution to another, Haiti has changed the fate of empires yet has not been...

A history of the distinctive, U.S. Capital sound that fuses hip-hop, funk, and soul

Available 10/15/2009New York Times­ best-selling author Cornel West is one of America’s most provocative and admired public intellectuals. Whether in the classroom, the streets, the prisons, or the church, Dr. West’s uncluttered brilliance has been a...

In this first comparative history of race relations in the United States and South Africa, George M. Fredrickson uncovers parallels and differences in the origin and expression of white supremacy in the two countries.

He is one of the great voices in African-American history: Booker T. Washington rose from a boyhood in shackles in West Virginia-he was eight when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution freed all slaves in 1865-to the status of national hero. In...

Since its original publication in 1984, Manning Marable's Race, Reform, and Rebellion has become widely known as the most crucial political and social history of African Americans since World War II. Aimed at students of contemporary American politics...

Black Genders and Sexualities provides a survey of new work by scholars who grapple with the ways gender and sexuality constellate with race. Cutting across the humanities and social sciences, and situated in sites across the black diaspora, the works...

In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through...