African American Studies

In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural "whitemalegod" and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us...

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer edits a collection of Alain Locke's influential essays on the importance of the Black artist and the Black imagination A Penguin Classic For months, the philosopher Alain Locke wrestled with the idea of the Negro as...

A memoir and manifesto from the comedian, hit podcast host, and star of United Shades of America   You may know W. Kamau Bell from his critically acclaimed hit show on CNN United Shades of America. Or maybe you've read about him in the New York...

ONE OF TIME'S TEN MOST IMPORTANT NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story...

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of...

Challenges narrow perceptions of Blackness as both an identity and lived reality to understand the diversity of what it means to be Black in the US and around the world What exactly is Blackness and what does it mean to be Black?Is Blackness a matter of...

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, an "illuminating" (New York Times Book Review) history of white male identity. What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they...

Read the story behind the award-winning film Judas and the Black Messiah On December 4, 1969, attorney Jeff Haas was in a police lockup in Chicago, interviewing Fred Hampton's fiancée. Deborah Johnson described how the police pulled her from the room as...

An illustrated highlight reel of more than 100 women in rap who have helped shape the genre and eschewed gender norms in the process The Motherlode highlights more than 100 women who have shaped the power, scope, and reach of rap music, including...

Whether engaged in same-sex desire or gender nonconformity, black queer individuals live with being perceived as a threat while simultaneously being subjected to the threat of physical, psychological, and socioeconomical injury. Attending to and...

Light from Ancient Africa is a critical contribution to what might be called the "Re-Africanization of Psychology Project." It was within this project that we came to realize that the notion of human psychology was and remains an African...

Sistah Vegan is a series of narratives, critical essays, poems, and reflections from a diverse community of North American black-identified vegans. Collectively, these activists are de-colonizing their bodies and minds via whole-foods veganism. By...

This landmark work first published 20 years ago helped establish the field of African-American womanist theology. It is widely regarded as a classic text in the field. Drawing on the biblical figure of Hagar mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert...

Young Black Americans have been trying to realize the promise of the American Dream for centuries and coping with the reality of its limitations for just as long. Now, a new generation is pursuing success, happiness, and freedom -- on their own terms. ...

Searing Dispatches from the Urban Zones Where African American Men Have Become an Endangered Species  To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in going beyond race, putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then seventeen-year-old...

Over more than two centuries men, women, and children escaped from slavery to make the Southern wilderness their home. They hid in the mountains of Virginia and the low swamps of South Carolina; they stayed in the neighborhood or paddled their way to...