Literary Criticism

A timely look at contemporary African American creative works through the lens of Ta-Nehisi Coates's ground-breaking entry into the comic book industry. Writing Black Panther traces Ta-Nehisi Coates's presence in comic books from 2015-2023, focusing on...

Explore the Stories Behind the Legends First introduced in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, Miles Morales reconceived Spider-Man as African American and Latinx, and his debut marked a new direction in the saga of a beloved character. Miles...

The first book-length study of Dorothy West, now with new writings and insights Originally published in 2005, WheretheWildGrapeGrows: SelectedWritings, 1930-1950 was the first book-length study of Dorothy West's work, providing a rich and insightful...

Across a range of literary texts, Black writers depict taking flight to escape systems of subordination from the Middle Passage and the plantation to the present-day racialized order. While flight, air, and aviation technologies have long held out the...

Across a range of literary texts, Black writers depict taking flight to escape systems of subordination from the Middle Passage and the plantation to the present-day racialized order. While flight, air, and aviation technologies have long held out the...

This book combines in one volume two now classic short story collections. The editor has added a new introduction and prefatory material. "Mary Helen Washington has had a greater impact upon the formation of the canon of Afro-American literature than has...

Following his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, award-winning author Walter Mosley delivers an eloquent treatise on the craft of fiction writing--part writing guide, part study of the mechanics of the genre. In his essential...

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,...

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...