Literary Criticism

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 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...

From the man known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance comes a powerful, provocative, and affecting anthology of writers who shaped the Harlem Renaissance movement and who help us to consider the evolution of the African American in society. With...

""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,...

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...

Vivid poems of "breakdown and spiritual disarray." Writing these, Walker says, "led me eventually into a larger understanding of the psyche, and of the world." What finally marks this volume is the strong sense of change and, ultimately, of forgiveness...