A shrewdly designed, generously expansive, timely contribution to our understanding of how 'black' expression continues to define and defy the contours of global (post)modernity. The essays argue persuasively for a transnational ethos binding disparate African and diasporic enactments, and together provide a robust conversation about the nature, history, future, and even possibility of 'blackness' as a distinctive mode of cultural practice.--Kimberly Benston, author of Performing Blackness Black Cultural Traffic is nothing less than our generation's manifesto on black performance and popular ... View More...
In a society that promotes perfectionism, anti-racism work is made tougher, paralyzing those of us who want to do better with worry that we might make a mistake. This is the byproduct of patriarchal, white supremest cultures that value the work of the individual above all else; in contrast, Check Your Privilege values the collective, knowing that this vulnerable work requires us to lean into interdependence and imperfection. Check Your Privilege requires all of us to pause, making time for self-reflection and connection through relationships in order to move forward. In this book, five social ... View More...
A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the Rain"Whether heralding unsung entertainers or reexamining legends, Hanif Abdurraqib weaves together gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance. I read this book breathlessly."--Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country sh... View More...
A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the Rain"Whether heralding unsung entertainers or reexamining legends, Hanif Abdurraqib weaves together gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance. I read this book breathlessly."--Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country sh... View More...
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER from the author of OUR TIME IS NOW Abrams's own grit, coupled with her descriptions of much stumbling and self-doubt, will...touch you in a way few books by politicians can. --The New York TimesPRAISE FOR STACEY ABRAMSIn a time when too many folks are focused simply on how to win an election, Stacey's somebody who cares about something more important: why we should. That's the kind of politics we should practice. That's why I'm proud to give Stacey Abrams my support. President Barack Obama National leader Stacey Abrams has written the guide to harnessing the stre... View More...
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series"Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man""You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have." So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. "There is a fix," Acho says. "But in order to access it, we're going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations." In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and ... View More...
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series"Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man""You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have." So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. "There is a fix," Acho says. "But in order to access it, we're going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations." In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and ... View More...
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series"Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man""You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have." So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. "There is a fix," Acho says. "But in order to access it, we're going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations." In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and ... View More...
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series"Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man""You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have." So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. "There is a fix," Acho says. "But in order to access it, we're going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations." In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and ... View More...
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system f... View More...
Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly' Slate' Chronicle of Higher Education' Literary Hub, Book Riot' and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." --Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book ha... View More...
Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly' Slate' Chronicle of Higher Education' Literary Hub, Book Riot' and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." --Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book ha... View More...
Reluctant Reformers explores the centrality of racism to American politics through the origins, internal dynamics, and leadership of the major democratic and social justice movements between the early nineteenth century and the end of World War II. It focuses in particular on the abolitionists, the Populist Party, the Progressive reformers, and the women's suffrage, labor, and socialist and communist movements. Despite their achievements, virtually all these predominantly white movements failed to oppose, capitulated to, or even advocated racism at critical junctures in their history, with the... View More...
"The read of the year." --Junot D az White Girls, Hilton Als's first book since The Women 16 years ago, finds one of The New Yorker's boldest cultural critics deftly weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls," as Als dubs them--an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Michael Jackson and Flannery O'Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, h... View More...
Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence, but in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. This unwritten set of rules--based largely on an individual's ability to command respect--is a powerful and pervasive form of etiquette, governing the way in which people learn to negotiate public spaces. Elijah Anderson's incisive book delineates the code and examines it as a response to the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, to the stigma of race, to rampant drug use, to alienation and lack of hope. View More...
Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence, but in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. This unwritten set of rules--based largely on an individual's ability to command respect--is a powerful and pervasive form of etiquette, governing the way in which people learn to negotiate public spaces. Elijah Anderson's incisive book delineates the code and examines it as a response to the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, to the stigma of race, to rampant drug use, to alienation and lack of hope. View More...
In a powerful, revealing portrait of city life, Anderson explores the dilemma of both blacks and whites, the underclass and the middle class, caught up in the new struggle not only for common ground--prime real estate in a racially changing neighborhood--but for shared moral community. Blacks and whites from a variety of backgrounds speak candidly about their lives, their differences, and their battle for viable communities. The sharpness of his observations and the simple clarity of his prose recommend his book far beyond an academic audience. Vivid, unflinching, finely observed, Streetwise i... View More...
