African American Studies

A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country's history...

From beloved and bestselling author Roxane Gay, "a strikingly fresh cultural critic" (Washington Post) comes an exhilarating collection of her essays on culture, politics, and everything in between. Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad...

When Black feminist and scholar bell hooks died in 2021, she was widely remembered for writing more than three dozen books across genres including memoir, poetry, theory, and criticism. However, it was her book Ain't I a Woman, in which hooks examines...

A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers a radical and vital new framework going beyond the current debate over this controversial issue. For...

Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of...

Peabody Award-winning journalist Michele Norris offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America, unearthed through her decade-long work at The Race Card Project. The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send. The...

Empower Your Sons Against Institutionalized Racism"One of the most important pieces of literature for Black parents."--MJ Fievre, author of Raising Confident Black KidsA powerful guide to navigate the challenges of raising families in turbulent times. In...

An incendiary literary work more relevant now than ever. "if anger were an ax/it would split me open/and if this is a sermon/let it be my granddaddy's sermon/my grandmother's foottapping/steady rocking/choir singing" --from "This Is Not a New Age" First...

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans.America's backstory is a...

In this groundbreaking classic essay collection, Alice Walker speaks out as a Black woman, writer, mother, and feminist on topics ranging from the personal to the political.Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker's first collection of...

A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation. In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women's March podium just after the presidential...

A stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America might--together--come to a new view of our shared past   "A vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evils...Hopeful...

Fill the void. Lift your voice. Say Her Name. Black women, girls, and femmes as young as seven and as old as ninety-three have been killed by the police, though we rarely hear their names or learn their stories. Breonna Taylor, Alberta Spruill, Rekia...

A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr.In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina...

'We need this book' SIMON REEVE'Illuminating' FINANCIAL TIMESWhy is Africa often perceived as a single country? What role did African soldiers play in the Second World War?Who else led the charge against Apartheid in South Africa?How did an African man...