African American Studies

What is feminism?

In this short, accessible primer, Bell Hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her....

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world....

Can't get enough of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? Wondering if you missed something important in one of the chapters? Dive a little deeper into her world....

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator Bell Hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today.

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years....

Once again, the poet casts her spell as she resumes one of the greatest personal narratives of our time. In this continuation, Angelou relates how she joins a "colony" of Black American expatriates in Ghana--only to discover no one ever goes home again...

A reclamation of essential history and a hopeful gesture toward a better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks like—from a professor of political science and columnist for Teen Vogue. “Jenn M. Jackson is a beautiful writer and excellent scholar. In this book, they pay...

Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery continue to define the Black experience? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism....

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics–a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated...

It’s time for a black exit. Political activist and social media star Candace Owens addresses the many ways that Democrat Party policies hurt, rather than help, the African American community, and why she and many others are turning right. Black Americans have long been shackled to the...

rst published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. The Souls of Black Folk is a classic in the literature of civil rights....

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history.....

Considered by many to be a founder of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra - a.k.a. Herman Blount - was a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, entrepreneur, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn....

Imagination: A Manifesto offers visionary examples and tactics to push beyond the constraints of what we think, and are told, is possible. This book is for anyone who is ready to take to heart Toni Morrison's instruction: "Dream a little before you think."

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER In the face of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence, how can we metabolize our anger into a force for liberation? White supremacy in the United States has long necessitated that Black rage be suppressed, repressed, or denied, often as a means of...

A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must for all those interested in the nature of Black womanhood....

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of essays that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives....

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently....

Ten years ago, Bell Hooks astonished readers/listeners with Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives.

In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family....

In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices....

Propelled by the prominence of state leaders such as Grand Dragon James Comer and head of Women of the KKK Robbie Gill Comer, the Klan established Little Rock as a seat of power. In The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas, Kenneth C. Barnes traces this explosion of white nationalism.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life....

In his reflections on God, Jesus, suffering, and liberation, James H. Cone relates the gospel message to the experience of the Black community. But a wider theme of the book is the role that social and historical context plays in framing the questions we address to God....

From the New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello comes a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on race.

Black, queer, feminist, Buddhist: The Fire Inside casts a fresh new light on the radical literary legacies of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde Includes meditation exercises Named a Lit Hub Independent Press Top 40 Bestseller. The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin...

In The Racial Wealth Gap, Baradaran outlines two tectonic forces that have driven apart the economic fortunes of white and Black families: wealth creation for white Americans, who have been systematically receiving financial subsidies in the century and a half since emancipation, and wealth destruction for Black Americans—either by vigilante violence or by official means, such as allowing Black banks to collapse or building highways through segregated Black communities.

Ernest Crim III reveals how understanding African American black history is not just about the past—it's essential for navigating the present. From uncovering overlooked black history facts to sharing powerful black history stories, Crim demonstrates why black history for adults is more relevant than ever. The book explores why black history is American history, and how real history of America includes the triumphs, struggles, and contributions of black Americans.

The second volume of the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography that The Washington Post hailed as “an engrossing masterpiece.” In this final magisterial volume, fifteen years in the research and writing, David Levering Lewis stunningly recreates the second half of W.E.B. Du Bois’s charged and...