African American Studies

"The challenges of identity, assimilation, achievement, and politics that were faced by Lahoma and Cindy are the same challenges our youth are facing today." -Jaki Shelton Green, poet and NC Literary Hall of Fame inductee The school careers of two...

Urban decay can sap the determination--not to mention the soul--of anyone who experiences it. But there are forces that can and do reverse it. They are not spectators, or critics, or occasional demonstrators. They are groups of citizens, encouraged and...

Booklist Editors' Choice "Best Books of 2019" An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an...

Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic plantation mentality embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation...

2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award WinnerFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it--a sweeping chronicle...

""William Myers has produced an outstanding study of the call to ministry among African American clergy. This is the broadest and deepest study of African American call stories and narratives ever written. Moving beyond the ethnographic descriptions,...

Glynn County's African-American citizenry has left an indelible mark on the history of Georgia as well as the nation. Such notable figures as Dr. Charles Wesley Buggs, renowned microbiologist; Robert Sengstacke Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender;...

Provides guidance in the practical aspects of fieldwork and gives suggestions for collecting both qualitative and quantitative cultural data. The author was inspired by students and fieldworkers to write a practical field guide to cultural research for...

Once upon a time we knew the origins of things: what piece of earth the potato on our dinner plate came from, which well our water was dipped from, who cobbled our shoes, and whose cow provided the leather. In many parts of the world, that information is...

Unable to match firepower with the competition--Sonny, a coiffed millionaire; Baby Doll, a 300-pound Jesus freak; and Studs, a ruthless lesbian--Giveadamn devises a shrewd scheme. His secret weapon: the Golden Fleece, a fantastical machine that defies...

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Nonfiction Named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Boston Globe, and Kirkus Reviews (Best Nonfiction)Countless...