Literary Criticism

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Why do we sign our names? How can a squiggle both enslave and liberate? Signatures often require a witness-as if the scrawl itself is not enough...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you shop there,...

You know you're fine. Plus, you have a decent job, a nice place to live. You're smart and ambitious. So, where's your man? Because you're so well pulled together and without a partner, you may have developed an attitude toward men. Believe it or not,...

After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he...

These poems are about revolutionaries and lovers-about how, both in revolution and in love, loss of trust and compassion robs us of hope. They are also about (and for) those few embattled souls who remain painfully committed to beauty and to love even...

A unique and comprehensive collection of 26 literary essays that provides real evidence of the rich cultural history of black women in America. Black women's writing has finally emerged as one of the most dynamic fields of American literature. Here,...

The Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, is an outstanding figure in modernAfrican literature whose works can be taken as an early literary attempt tomove toward de-colonization. What distinguishes Achebe's novels is the wayhe relies on notions of...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In an election year, political signs can be impossible to avoid. They're in front yards, on bumper stickers, and in some places you might never...

The Tales Of Miles Grey goes deep into many real-life challenges faced in inner-city Brooklyn. Through the experiences of this young man trying to break free of his rough environment, light is shed on the impact fathers and mentors hold in becoming the...

With this appreciation of three very different black writers, novelist Darryl Pinckney reminds us that marginal or neglected literary figures have a lot to tell us about the history of a people who are always outsiders. Born in Jamaica in 1883, J. A...