Literary Criticism

CARNEGIE MEDAL FINALIST - A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - From "one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir "as electric as...

Luminescent Threads celebrates Octavia E. Butler, a pioneer of the Science Fiction genre who paved the way for future African American writers and other writers of colour. Original essays and letters sourced and curated for this collection explore...

These are the books you should read. This is the canon. Upending our traditionally white-dominated 'to be read' piles, Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay push to the fore the voices and cultural perspectives that demand a place on...

What are the conditions needed for our nation to bridge cultural and racial divides? By writing beyond race, noted cultural critic bell hooks models the constructive ways scholars, activists, and readers can challenge and change systems of domination.In...

"Fascinating and instructive...King's philosophy, speaking to us through the written word, may turn out to constitute his most enduring legacy."--Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of America's most revered...

The landmark book about being black in America, now in an expanded edition commemorating the 150th anniversary of W. E. B. Du Bois's birth and featuring a new introduction by Ibram X. Kendi, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an...

The Souls of Black Folk is both a groundbreaking work of sociology and an influential cornerstone of African-American literature. From the moment it was published in 1903, this unique and stirring blend of history, essay, fiction, and memoir set the...

""The ideas of God in Negro literature are developed along three principal lines: (1) Ideas of God that are used to support or give adherence to traditional, compensatory patterns; (2) Ideas, whether traditional or otherwise, that are developed and...

The Messenger was the third most popular magazine of the Harlem Renaissance after The Crisis and Opportunity. Unlike the other two magazines, The Messenger was not tied to a civil rights organization. Labor activist A. Philip Randolph and economist...

Baldwin on race is Baldwin on the white American psyche.... The Cross of Redemption becomes an absorbing portrait of Baldwin's time--and of him. --New York Review of Books A revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles,...

A landmark anthology of forty poets that brought serious attention to writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. The poetry, the prefaces, and Johnson's critical notes have made this book a classic. Indices.

One of the most provocative and original voices in contemporary literature, Chinua Achebe here considers the place of literature and art in our society in a collection of essays spanning his best writing and lectures from the last twenty-three years. For...

The Encyclopedia of Black Comics, focuses on people of African descent who have published significant works in the United States or have worked across various aspects of the comics industry. The book focuses on creators in the field of comics: inkers,...

The first novel by "master of mystery" (The New York Times) Walter Mosley, featuring Easy Rawlins, the most iconic African American detective in all of fiction. Named one of the "best 100 mystery novels of all time" by the Mystery Writers of America,...

This close study of the first six novels of Toni Morrison--The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz--situates her as an African American writer within the American literary tradition who interrogates national identity and...

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...