Literary Criticism

Captive Ecologies makes a case for the ecological significance of slavery's afterlife, tracing the complex entanglements between racial capitalism and Black ecological freedom. Attending to the ways that racial capitalism implicates both captive bodies...

Explores the recurring pattern in media, academia, and publishing to elevate one Black writer at a time, often at the expense of hundreds of others whose works go underrecognized. Starting in the 1960s, African American writers and commentators began...

Explores the recurring pattern in media, academia, and publishing to elevate one Black writer at a time, often at the expense of hundreds of others whose works go underrecognized. Starting in the 1960s, African American writers and commentators began...

Analyzing the writer as an activist and feminist who helped shape the Black women's movement. Frances E. W. Harper was a pioneering figure in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American literature and intellectual thought. A poet, educator,...

This accessible biography of Maya Angelou provides readers with an ideal introduction to the life and times of one of America's most beloved and influential Black artists. Maya Angelou: A Life in American History explores the life of one of the most...

An innovative contribution to the field of Black Feminist Studies, this landmark collection brings together the most influential historical and contemporary thinkers in Black feminist theories across transnational contexts. Featuring ground-breaking new...

An innovative contribution to the field of Black Feminist Studies, this landmark collection brings together the most influential historical and contemporary thinkers in Black feminist theories across transnational contexts. Featuring ground-breaking new...

Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869 -1954) preceded Scott Joplin, Shirley Graham, and William Grant Still in African-American grand opera composition. One of the earliest American composers to infuse his scores with jazz, blues, and spirituals, Freeman wrote...

"Dispels the myth that people of color are somehow predisposed to poor health, blaming systemic injustice in the health care system." --New York Times Book ReviewLegendary comedian D.L. Hughley uses his "hilarious yet soul-shaking" (Black Enterprise)...

An expansive lexicon of words, terms, concepts, and ideas that takes the multiplicity of Black life as its point of departure. Thinking from Black: A Lexicon is an unusual reference book. Its contributors--the Practicing Refusal Collective--are visual...

Scholars and critics have long understood the writing of nineteenth-century Black women as critiquing the figure of Topsy, an enslaved girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Many interpret the works of authors such as...

With clear, conversational prose, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's writings on translation. Through his many critically acclaimed novels, stories, essays, plays, and memoirs, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa...