African American Studies

"Superb. . . . A great American writer speaks with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives."--New York Times Book ReviewCelebrating its eightieth anniversary, Richard Wright's eloquent autobiography about growing up in...

In Alive in the Sound, Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities--spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always...

In The Human in Bits, Kris Cohen examines black abstractionist painting to demonstrate how race and computation are intimately entangled with the personal computer's graphic user interface. He shows how the personal computer and the graphical field of...

The life and 1984 murder of a beloved Black grandmother that changed community activism forever--and sparked the ongoing movement against racist policing and brutality #SayHerName: The story of Eleanor Bumpurs, told for the first time by decorated...

A founding document of African American Studies, reissued for today's students and scholars In a landmark 1968 conference at Yale University, students, faculty, and community activists helped establish "Afro-American Studies" as a major, and then a...

"A carefully understated but chilling account of the whole 3 1/2 centuries during which 15 million Africans were snatched from their homes and delivered into slavery in the New World." --Time In 1518, the Atlantic slave trade began with the landing in...

The incredible story of MOVE, the revolutionary Black civil liberties group that Philadelphia police bombed in 1985, killing 11 civilians--by one of the few people born into the organization, raised during the bombing's tumultuous aftermath, and...

"Stellar . . . Spectacular . . . [A] heartfelt, painstaking account." --Nell Irvin Painter, The Washington Post "An extraordinary collaboration . . . A profound achievement . . . Downs is a superb, even lyrical writer." --David W. Blight, Los Angeles...

In The Disturbing Profane, Joseph R. Winters explores how hip hop's religiosity is found in qualities associated with the dark sacred. Rather than purity and wholeness, this expression of the sacred signifies death and pleasure, opacity and...

An incisive portrait of how the new Black politics can forge a future centered on collective action, community, and care When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black...

A collective portrait of the Black Power movement by radical journalist and former Black Panther JoNina Abron-ErvinDriven by the Movement collects the stories of twenty ordinary people who did extraordinary things for the Black liberation struggle during...

From a New Yorker staff writer and PEN award winner, a blend of memoir, history, and reportage on one of the most complex and least understood states in America. "In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster...." Alexis Okeowo grew up in...