Literary Criticism

By the time of her death, at the tragically young age of thirty-four, Lorraine Hansberry had created two electrifying masterpieces of the American theater. With A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry gave this country its most movingly authentic portrayal of...

Easy Rawlins is on the verge of losing everything--until he gets an offer from the FBI that he has no choice but to accept. For most Black Americans, the 1960s were times of hope. For former P.I. Easy Rawlins, Los Angeles's mean streets were never...

An illuminating, electrifying exploration of the work of Toni Morrison by an award-winning novelist and Harvard professor "As gripping as it is intellectually brilliant . . . a classic."--Cathy Park Hong "Serpell puts Morrison's genius on full display...

An elegant biography of a prescient author whose novels portray Black women's experiences across the African diaspora Growing up in World War II-era Brooklyn among West Indian immigrants, Paule Marshall (1929-2019) was fiercely driven to become a writer,...

Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved, Toni Morrison, investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation's collective unconscious In a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a...

A history of Black poets in Washington, DC, reveals how they have reflected and transformed American cultural discourseWashington, DC, has long been home to a dynamic and vibrant African American literary community, despite often being overshadowed by...

The origins and influence of Jim, Mark Twain's beloved yet polarizing literary figure "Astute. . . . Sheds new light on a much-studied character."--Publishers Weekly Mark Twain's Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd,...

A landmark book--the first complete publication of Langston Hughes's translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to...

In Breaking the World, Justin L. Mann argues that Black speculative fictions are an essential but overlooked archive for understanding the modern security ambitions of the United States. Foregrounding how the contemporary security state renders Black...

In Breaking the World, Justin L. Mann argues that Black speculative fictions are an essential but overlooked archive for understanding the modern security ambitions of the United States. Foregrounding how the contemporary security state renders Black...

One of Literary Hub's most anticipated books of 2024. Winner of the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Finalist for the 2025 Zora Awards. Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her...

An intimate portrait of James Baldwin, offering a new understanding of his life and works as seen through his close relationships and private life "Baldwin authority Zaborowska's gracefully impassioned biography. . . . A creatively conceived appreciation...