Cultural Literature

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks...

The first biography of Ericka Huggins, a queer Black woman who brought spiritual self-care practices to the Black Panther Party. In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses readers in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Simmons's evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with...

A compact introduction to Cauleen Smith's experimental, imaginative films incorporating science fiction, Afrofuturism and contemporary Chicago cultureSince making her first feature while a student at UCLA, Los Angeles-based artist Cauleen Smith (born...

This work examines African American children's poetry through a variety of lenses: jazz poetics, the blues, nonsense verse, gender and working-class studies. African American children's poetry reveals legacies of segregation, the Great Migration north,...

In this insightful new volume, Jack Chambers explores Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington's music thematically, collating motifs, memes, and predilections that caught Ellington's attention and inspired his restless muse. In presenting Ellington's work in...

Investigating why Hurston's writing fell out of favor during her lifetime only to be appreciated years after her death"Genevieve West's impressive new study clearly documents the course of Zora Neale Hurston's remarkable literary career and her...

This unique book, by a man who has chosen to "dress plain," describes the history and use of hats, bonnets, dresses, overcoats, and other articles of clothing used by the various religious groups who wear plain garb. This is the first comprehensive book...

Journey into the heart of Shiloh with Tanya Davis. Shiloh is a small vibrant African American community in Asheville, North Carolina. Threads is a multifaceted compilation capturing the essence of Shiloh through history, heartfelt stories, poems, prose,...

The first book to focus on experimental artist and designer Robert Paige Robert Earl Paige is one of the most iconic artists and designers from Chicago's South Side. A multidisciplinary artist and arts educator, he works across textile design, painting,...

Turn the traditional generational groupings on their head through this examination of Black life, culture, and the struggle for racial justice in the United States.The Shaping of Black Identities explores the generations of African Americans who have...

The first book to trace the critical reception of the great African American woman writer, attending not only to her fiction but to her nonfiction and critical writings. Winner of the Toni Morrison Society Book Prize for Best Single-Authored Book,...

"This Maileresque combination of personal reflection, boxing analysis, and sports biography is a must read for fight fans...." Booklist, Starred ReviewAn intimate portrait of Joe Frazier, whose ferocious rivalry with Muhammad Ali made them both boxing...

The stories of the Black men and women who combated racial prejudice in Washington, DC, with sports and musicIn the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social...

A punk rock anti-memoir told through the eyes of a biracial Afrolatino punk academic. P?NK! follows Moose, an alienated academic and lead guitarist for Pipebomb!, as he navigates through spaces in and out of South East Los Angeles: punk clubs, college...