Cultural Literature

In August 1965 the predominantly black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles erupted in flames and violence following an incident of police brutality. The official death toll was thirty-four; property losses reached hundreds of millions of dollars; but...

FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADER "A once-in-a-generation voice." - Vulture "One of our greatest living writers." - Shondaland A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times-bestselling...

Offering suggestions to correct the dehumanization of African American children, this book explains how to ensure that African American boys grow up to be strong, committed, and responsible African American men.

A meditation on the private and public fault lines which divide American society. In Civil Wars, June Jordan's battleground is the intersection of private and public reality, which she explores through a blending of personal reflection and political...

Before chain coffeeshops and luxury high-rises, before even the beginning of desegregation and the 1968 riots, Washington's Greater U Street was known as Black Broadway. From the early 1900s into the 1950s, African Americans plagued by Jim Crow laws in...

Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing. To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by...

Back in the Days documents the emerging Hip Hop scene from 1980-1989-before it became what is today's multi-million-dollar multinational industry. Back in the days, gangs would battle not with guns, but by breakdancing. Back in the days, the streets-not...

In this timely book, journalist Lisa Benson shares her journey from the newsroom to the courtroom in her fight for justice at a local television station.Lisa made national news when her twenty-year career as a news reporter / anchor ended abruptly after...

Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase read until you understand, a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the...

Dyson's work clearly comes from a deep well of love--for his country, for his people and for the intellectual and cultural figures he admires. --New York Times Entertaining Race is a splendid way to spend quality time reading one of the most remarkable...

From the woman who gave the landmark testimony against Clarence Thomas as a sexual menace, a new manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a...

The Haitian Revolution, the product of the first successful slave revolt, was truly world-historic in its impact. When Haiti declared independence in 1804, the leading powers--France, Great Britain, and Spain--suffered an ignominious defeat and the New...