Literary Criticism

From the National Book Award-winning author of Lighthead, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance...

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement...

One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to...

Baldwin's Harlem is an intimate portrait of the life and genius of one of our most brilliant literary minds: James Baldwin. Perhaps no other writer is as synonymous with Harlem as James Baldwin (1924-1987). The events there that shaped his youth...

Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Fall 2024 Poetry Books From Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a stunning collection of early works written from 1921-1927 and curated by award winning poet and National Book Award finalist, Danez Smith. Before Langston...

"I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin's prose. It liberated me as a writer."--Toni Morrison   This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin's 100th-year anniversary, probing the shortcomings of the American protest novel and the harmful...

A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country's history...

One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan's Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves "The...

Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what socio-cultural and...

Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King's assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public...

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...

From the acclaimed bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins series, deemed "one of America's best mystery writers" (The New York Times Book Review), comes a tale about a murdered man who does not want to go to heaven or hell--he'd rather have his old life...