Literary Criticism

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a revered African American civil rights leader, diplomat, lawyer, novelist, poet, and songwriter in the Harlem Renaissance. He also coauthored the hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as the Black national anthem...

The media tends to portray Africa in a manner that grossly distorts reality. The picture they paint is intended to make people of African descent feel ashamed of their past and their identity. This is unacceptable and must change. It is therefore a moral...

With Speech Is My Hammer, Max Hunter draws on memoir and his own biography to call his readers to reimagine the meaning and power in literacy. Defining literacy as a "spectrum of skills, abilities, attainments, and performances," Hunter focuses on...

As pastors of one of New York City's largest churches, Reverend Floyd Flake and his wife, Reverend M. Elaine McCollins Flake, are frequently sought after by those in need of guidance. Throughout their ministry, the Flakes have drawn from a distinguished...

'A searing, triumphant story. A testament to the tenacity of the human spirit as well as a beautiful ode to an iconic figure' IRENOSEN OKOJIE Letters to Gil is Malik Al Nasir's profound coming of age memoir - the story of surviving physical and...

This is a great resource that fills a tremendous need. It shouldbe on parents' shelves at home as well as in every school. --AlvinF. Poussaint, M.D. Harvard Medical School These are exciting times for African American children'sliterature. Never before...

Kudos for Black Books Galore! Guide to Great African AmericanChildren s Books Offers a wonderful overview of literature with black children inits focus. Jim Trelease, author, The Read-Aloud Handbook The perfect tool for parents and educators alike...

August Wilson (1945-2005) wrote one play for every decade of the twentieth century that explored black life in America for the descendants of slaves. All of his characters seek wholeness, identity, and reconstituted selves after the terror of 250 years...

When slaves were set free, forty acres and a mule were promised to the slaves on the plantation. The "40 acres" was the land on the plantation, while "the mule" was the physical body that did the work. Back when Black men were slaves on forty acres of...

As a member of the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, I have never forgotten how much that organization advanced my intellectual understanding of the dynamics of America and the world. Poetry and the Black Panther Party: from Ancestral...

By turns subtle and intense, disturbing and elusive, the stories in this collection are ultimately connected by themes of memory and loss, reality and fabrication, and by a richless of language that rests lightly on its carefully foundation.

With clear, conversational prose, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's writings on translation. Through his many critically acclaimed novels, stories, essays, plays, and memoirs, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa...

After its start in 1910, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races magazine became the major outlet for works by African American writers and intellectuals. In 1920, Langston Hughes's poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers was published in The Crisis and W. E. B...

From poet, author, educator Nikia Chaney comes an experimental memoir of extreme poverty and schizophrenia, mothering and love. This is Inglewood, California, 1988, bright and loud, spilling brown colored kids out on the sidewalk, like butterflies or...