Baldwin’s life and legacy as remembered by a pantheon of artists and writers: from Jamaica Kincaid and Barry Jenkins to Richard Avedon and Alice Neel

When author James Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind an extraordinary body of work: novels, poems, film scripts and, perhaps most indelibly, essays. A friend and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, Baldwin was a critical voice in the civil rights movement. After reaching acclaim in his early career as a writer, he struggled to retain the author’s “I,” while taking on the “we” of the people.
Edited by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als and growing out of his landmark exhibition at David Zwirner in 2019, God Made My Face brings together an impressive assembly of contributors, ranging from Baldwin biographer David Leeming to novelist Jamaica Kincaid and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, to create a memorial mosaic: one that not only mirrors Baldwin’s various tones but also closely examines his singular contributions to cinema, theater, the essay and Black American critical studies. These essays are illustrated by artwork from modern and contemporary artists who were either personal contemporaries of Baldwin or directly inspired by his work. In each piece assembled here, the authors speak from a personal, informed perspective, illuminating Baldwin’s deeply anguished and enlightened voice and his belief that, ultimately—because we are human—we share the potential to love, connect and live together in all our glory.
Artists include: Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Don Bachardy, Alvin Baltrop, Anthony Barboza, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, George McCalman, Alice Neel, Elle Pérez, Cameron Rowland, Kara Walker, James Welling, Larry Wolhandler.
Authors include:Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.

Langston Collin Wilkins returns to the city where he grew up to illuminate the complex relationship between place, identity, and music in Houston’s hip hop culture. Interviews with local rap artists, producers, and managers inform an exploration of how artists, audiences, music, and place interact to create a heritage that musicians negotiate in a variety of ways. Street-based musicians, avant-garde underground rappers, and Christian artists offer candid views of the scene while Wilkins delves into related aspects like slab, the area’s hip hop-related car culture. What emerges is a portrait of a dynamic reciprocal process where an artist, having identified with and embodied a social space, reproduces that space in a performance even as the performance reconstructs the social space.

A vivid journey through a southern hip hop bastion, Welcome 2 Houston offers readers an inside look at a unique musical culture.

“That is the archaeology I am unearthing: the specter of police violence and state control over the bodies of young Black and brown people all over the world.” –Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence features a new body of paintings and sculptures by American artist Kehinde Wiley confronting the legacies of colonialism through the visual language of the fallen figure. It expands on a subject the artist first explored in his 2008 series Down—a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men inspired by Wiley’s encounter with Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22) at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Holbein’s painting triggered an ongoing investigation into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art that Wiley traced across religious, mythological and historical subjects. An Archaeology of Silence extends these considerations to include men and women around the world whose senseless deaths, often unacknowledged or silenced, are transformed into a powerful elegy of global resistance against state-sanctioned violence. The resulting paintings of Black bodies struck down, wounded or dead, all referencing iconic historical paintings of slain heroes, martyrs or saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and brown bodies through the lens of European art history.
Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) is a world-renowned visual artist. Working in the mediums of painting, sculpture and video, Wiley is best known for his vibrant portrayals of contemporary African American and African-diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. Wiley became the first African American artist to paint an official US Presidential portrait for former US President Barack Obama. Wiley has held solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, and his works are included in the collections of over 40 public institutions worldwide. He lives and works in Beijing, Dakar and New York.

In seiner Serie Afro-Iran stellt der deutsch-iranische Fotograf Mahdi Ehsaei (*1989) eine Facette des Iran vor, die selbst Einheimischen weitgehend unbekannt ist: Im Süden des Landes gibt es eine ethnische Minderheit, die das Erbe ihrer afrikanischen Herkunft in Kleidungsstil, Musik und Tanz sowie in ihren mündlichen Überlieferungen und Ritualen bis heute aufrecht erhält und so die Kultur der gesamten Region beeinflusst hat. Für sein Projekt reiste Ehsaei in die südiranische Provinz Hormozgan am Persischen Golf, der Heimat der Nachfahren von Sklaven und Händlern aus Afrika. In dieser Gegend, reich and Traditionen und Geschichte, lebt einer der ethnisch vielfältigsten Bevölkerungsanteile in einer einzigartigen Landschaft. In seinem Buch präsentiert Ehsaei zahlreiche überraschende Porträts, die dem landläufigen Bild vom Iran nicht entsprechen. "Afro-Iran" zeigt vielmehr Details, die die Jahrhunderte alte Geschichte einer Bevölkerungsgruppe dokumentieren, die in der Geschichtschreibung des Iran häufig vergessen wird und die doch die Kultur des Südens entscheidend geprägt hat.

Famed 60s sunshine pop band 5th Dimension’s LaMonte McLemore’s additional enduring legacy is that of a photographer, contributing a weekly column “Beauty of the Week” to the renowned publication of African American pop culture, JET. Here, for the first time, is his personal selection of the column’s glory era.

As a founding member and vocalist in the award-winning pop-soul group The 5th Dimension, LaMonte McLemore enjoyed enormous critical and commercial acclaim in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But arguably just as impactful, if not more so, was his career as a photographer cementing Black women and models in American media and cultural history.

McLemore freelanced for JET magazine for more than four decades, principally shooting for its “Beauty of the Week” feature, which encapsulated Black joy, style, and beauty. During this time, he photographed over 500 Black women, most of whom were not professional models. The section, in which a woman was featured in a swimsuit along with her name, place of residence, profession, hobbies, and interests, became one of the most popular among the magazine’s audiences, as it showcased the everyday beauty and elegance of Black women, contributing greatly to what has been called the “first form of social media” by acclaimed contemporary visual artist, Mickalene Thomas. This photographic output serves as a living document of everyday Black fashion and elegance.

Black Is Beautiful: JET Beauties of the Week compiles, for the first time, numerous photographs from McLemore’s “Beauty of the Week” shoots, including never-before-seen outtakes from those sessions. This dynamic coffee table book is a tribute to LaMonte McLemore’s talent and cultural impact, and is a celebration of Black women, Black beauty, and Black culture.

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The creators of the popular website Black Nerd Problems bring their witty and unflinching insight to this engaging collection of pop culture essays on everything from Mario Kart and The Wire to issues of representation and police brutality across media.

When William Evans and Omar Holmon founded Black Nerd Problems, they had no idea whether anyone beyond their small circle of friends would be interested in their little corner of the internet. But soon after launching, they were surprised to find out that there was a wide community of people who hungered for fresh perspectives on all things nerdy, from the perspective of #OwnedVoices.

In the years since, Evans and Holmon have built a large, dedicated fanbase eager for their brand of cultural critique, whether in the form of a laugh-out-loud, raucous Game of Thrones episode recap or an eloquent essay on dealing with grief through stand-up comedy. Now, they are ready to take the next step with this vibrant and hilarious essay collection, which covers everything from X-Men to Breonna Taylor with insight and intelligence.

A much needed and fresh pop culture critique from the perspective of people of color, Black Nerd Problems is the ultimate celebration for anyone who loves a blend of social commentary and all things nerdy.

PRE-ORDER.  Ships November 4, 2025

Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 photographs, including never-before-seen images, The Look is a stunning journey through Michelle Obama’s style evolution, in her own words for the first time.

In this celebration of style, from the moment she entered the public eye during her husband’s U.S. Senate campaign through her time as the first Black First Lady and today as one of this country’s most influential figures, Michelle Obama shares how she uses the beauty and intrigue of fashion to draw attention to her message.

Featuring the voices of Meredith Koop, Obama’s trusted stylist, as well as her makeup artist Carl Ray, hairstylists Yene Damtew and Njeri Radway, and many of the designers who have dressed Obama for notable events, The Look brings readers behind the scenes not only to reveal how her most memorable looks came together but also to tell a powerful story about how we present ourselves.

Obama’s intimate and candid stories illuminate how her approach to dressing has evolved throughout her life—from the colorful sheath dresses, cardigans, and brooches she wore during her time as First Lady to the bold suits, denim, and braids of her post-White House life and all the active looks and beautiful gowns in between.

In The Look, Michelle Obama explores the joy and the purpose of fashion and beauty and how—when wielded with grace and care—they can uplift and affirm the values one holds most dear. Confidence, she concludes, cannot be put on. But when you’re wearing something that’s intentional or beloved, clothing can make you feel like the best version of yourself.

Celebrate the release of Slices of Black American Life with MR.TOMONOSHi!!

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, August 6 @ 7PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St #2, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming

ABOUT THE BOOK

Slices of Black American Life is a raw, electrifying yet polished articulation of Black America—its past, present, and future woven through Blaxploitation-inspired poetry and storytelling with cinematic flair.

It possesses a jazz rhythm in tone, MR. TOMONOSHi!’s words tap dance across the page—each syllable hitting like a beat, each line swinging with improvised brilliance.

Each piece offers a window into the fantastical worlds of Black American life, where reality and imagination collide—the characters breathe, move, speak, inviting you in, pulling you close, immersing you deep into the roots of the Black American experience.

A whimsical realness pulsates throughout its entirety.

This collection is more than homage—it’s an ode to the brilliance of Blaxploitation, capturing its bold aesthetics, fearless spirit, and unfiltered truth. Every poem, every story, cuts deep, speaks loud, and refuses to be forgotten.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MR. TOMONOSHi is a prolific multidisciplinary creator whose work spans literature, animation, interactive media, fashion, photography, and music. Known for his sophisticated yet whimsical approach to storytelling and design, he transforms everyday moments into immersive, culturally rich experiences for audiences of all ages. With a background in design and a deep commitment to imaginative play, MR. TOMONOSHi builds vibrant worlds that resonate from classrooms to playgrounds to living rooms—and now, across screens.

His work blends narrative elegance with playful ingenuity, bringing cinematic voice to books, games, fashion, and experiences that blur the line between reality and imagination. 

This exploration of Black dandy fashion and its representation in art and literature highlights the vibrant, complicated legacy of a recognizable yet constantly shifting style, from its origins in Enlightenment Europe to the contemporary art and fashion worlds
 
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style traces the complex and vibrant legacy of menswear across three centuries of Black culture—from today’s hip-hop aesthetic and popular street trends, through its use during the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement as a symbol of creative and political agency, to its surprising origins as an imposed uniform for servants and enslaved people. Organized by key characteristics of dandyism that resonate across time, including presence, distinction, disguise, and respectability, this fresh interpretation of a centuries-old aesthetic draws on prominent Black voices in fashion, literature, and art—among them, Dandy Wellington, Amy Sherald, Iké Udé, and André 3000. Self-described dandies and high-fashion models feature in a stunning photo essay by artist Tyler Mitchell, who also contributes evocative new photography of garments by contemporary designers such as Virgil Abloh, Pharrell Williams, and Grace Wales Bonner. These works are shown alongside historical attire worn by Black luminaries including Frederick Douglass, Alexandre Dumas père, Muhammad Ali, and André Leon Talley. Scholar Monica L. Miller contextualizes these objects in her text and shows how the evolution of dandy style inspired new visions of Black masculinity that use the power of clothing and dress as a means of self-expression.
 
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(May 10–October 26, 2025)

Catalogue design by Pacific (Elizabeth Karp-Evans and Adam Turnbull)

Harlem’s gay ball subculture of the late 1980s is superbly documented in this trove of previously unseen photographs.

In 1989, Malcolm McLaren had his only number one hit with a single called "Deep in Vogue." Early the next year, Madonna had one of the biggest hits of her career, with the single "Vogue," and when Jennie Livingston's film Paris Is Burning arrived in cinemas the same year, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the mainstream got hip to New York City's extraordinary ball culture, from which the film and McLaren and Madonna's songs had arisen. Paris Is Burning documented a gay ballroom scene that emerged in Harlem in the mid-1980s, which drew African American and Latino gay and transgender communities to compete against one another for their dancing skills, the verisimilitude of their drag and their ability to walk on the runway. Photographer Chantal Regnault spent many years recording this scene, from which the dance style known as voguing arose. A visual riot of fashion, polysexuality and subversive style, Voguing and the Ballroom Scene of New York 1989–1992 is also an extraordinary document on sexuality and race. The wild years of voguing are vividly captured in hundreds of Regnault's amazing, previously unpublished photographs. The book also features interviews with key figures from the movement, essays, flyers and ephemera.
Photographer and documentarist Chantal Regnault was born in France. She left Paris after the 1968 uprisings and lived in New York for the next 15 years. At the end of the 1980s she became immersed in Harlem's voguing scene. Also around this time, Regnault developed an interest in Haitian voodoo culture and began to divide her time between Haiti and New York. Her widely published photographs have appeared in major magazines and newspapers, including Vanity Fair and the New York Times.

A nuanced profile, in image and text, of the great Black Power leader at the exhilarating moment of the movement’s ascendancy

Gordon Parks’ 1967 Life magazine essay “Whip of Black Power” is a nuanced profile of the young, controversial civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael gained national attention and inspired media backlash when he issued the call for Black Power in Greenwood, Mississippi, in June 1966. Parks shadowed him from the fall of 1966 to the spring of 1967, as Carmichael gave speeches, headed meetings and promoted the growing Black Power movement. Parks’ photos and writing addressed Carmichael’s intelligence and humor, presenting the whole man behind the headline-making speeches and revealing his own advocacy of Black Power and its message of self-determination and love.
Stokely Carmichael and Black Power delves into Parks’ groundbreaking presentation of Carmichael, with analysis of his images and accompanying text about the charismatic leader. Lisa Volpe explores Parks’ complex understanding of the movement and its leader, and Cedric Johnson frames Black Power within the heightened political moment of the late 1960s. Carmichael’s own voice is represented through a reprint of his important 1966 essay “What We Want.”
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a photographer, filmmaker, musician and author whose 50-year career focused on American culture, social justice, the civil rights movement and the Black American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942, which led to a position with the Farm Security Administration. In 1969 he became the first Black American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, and his next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a film genre.

In Music Is History, bestselling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove harnesses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and his deep curiosity about history to examine America over the past fifty years. Choosing one essential track from each year, Questlove unpacks each song’s significance, revealing the pivotal role that American music plays around issues of race, gender, politics, and identity.

A gorgeous, authoritative, and image-filled celebration of pageantry and community created by ballroom culture for Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ people.

The subculture of Ballroom emerged in Harlem in the ‘60s out of a need for safe and inclusive spaces for Black and Brown queer people, in which family-like "Houses" competed at performative balls, allowing members of this marginalized groups to shine. Thanks to shows like Pose and Legendary, it has grown into a global phenomenon. It offers refuge from the threats and violence against the LGBTQIA+ community while also serving as a testament to the radical nature of queer joy with its pageantry and commitment to chosen family.

Ballroom: A History, A Movement, A Celebration is an exhaustively researched tome honoring where Ballroom began and where it is now. It explores how Ballroom has served the Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ community. Bringing both an authoritative and entertaining sweep to this hugely important and influential cultural sensation, this book is filled with photos, interviews, and stories, presenting a captivating, well-documented narrative about not only how to survive but how to do so fashionably, glamorously, and in the company of one another.

A groundbreaking collection of photographs and essays that shed new light on the history of Black America, from the Picturing Black History project

Picturing Black History uncovers untold stories and rarely seen images of the Black experience, providing new context around culturally significant moments, as part of an ongoing collaborative effort between Getty Images, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, and the History Departments at The Ohio State and Miami Universities.

Picturing Black History informs, educates, and inspires our current moment by exploring the past, blending the breadth and depth of Getty Images’s archives with the renowned expertise of Origins contributors and The Ohio State’s and Miami’s History Departments, including Daniela Edmeier, Damarius Johnson, Nicholas Breyfogle, and Steve Conn.

Created by a growing collective of professional historians, art historians, Black Studies scholars, and photographers, this book is full of rousing, vibrant essays paired with rarely seen photographs that expand our understanding of Black history. Showcasing Getty Images’s unmatched collection of photographs, Picturing Black History embraces the power of visual storytelling to relay little-known stories of oppression and resistance, perseverance and resilience, freedom, dreams, imagination, and joy within the United States and around the world.

In collecting these new photographic essays, this book furthers an ongoing dialogue on the significance of Black history and Black life, sharing new perspectives on the current status of prejudice and discrimination bias with a wider audience. Picturing Black History embraces the power of academic learning and scholarship to recontextualize and dispel prejudices, while uncovering, digitizing, and preserving new archival materials to amplify a more inclusive visual landscape.

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Filled with reproductions of Kehinde Wiley’s bold, colorful, and monumental work, this book encompasses the artist’s various series of paintings as well as his sculptural work—which boldly explore ideas about race, power, and tradition. Celebrated for his classically styled paintings that depict African American men in heroic poses, Kehinde Wiley is among the expanding ranks of prominent black artists—such as Sanford Biggers, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—who are reworking art history and questioning its depictions of people of color. Co-published with the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the major touring retrospective, this volume surveys Wiley’s career from 2001 to the present. It includes early portraits of the men Wiley observed on Harlem’s streets, and which laid the foundation for his acclaimed reworkings of Old Master paintings by Titian, van Dyke, Manet, and others, in which he replaces historical subjects with young African American men in contemporary attire: puffy jackets, sneakers, hoodies, and baseball caps. Also included is a generous selection from Wiley’s ongoing World Stage project; several of his enormous Down paintings; striking male portrait busts in bronze; and examples from the artist’s new series of stained glass windows. Accompanying the illustrations are essays that introduce readers to the arc of Wiley’s career, its critical reception, and ongoing evolution.

A masterpiece of identity horror and a dark reflection on America’s past and present, Us presents chilly atmospherics, psychological torment and old-world suspense-building plot twists. Whereas Get Out was considered more a mixture of drama and suspense, Peele leaned fully into the horror genre with his sophomore film, using urban legends such as doppelgangers to tease out the uniquely American perceptions of xenophobia and “othering.” Critic Monica Castillo wrote of the film: “Us is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition.”
Published in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the critically acclaimed film’s release, this companion paperback features Oscar®-winning director Jordan Peele’s screenplay, alternate endings and deleted scenes, and is richly illustrated with over 150 stills from the motion picture. Specially commissioned annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor present a cosmology of images, definitions and inspirations that extend the themes of the film. Continuing in the legacy of 1960s paperbacks that documented the era’s most significant avant-garde films―such as Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Godard’s Masculin Féminin and Antonioni’s L’Avventura―Us is an indispensable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film.
Jordan Peele (born 1979) is a writer, actor and filmmaker who rose to fame as half of the comedy duo Key & Peele. He has written and directed three feature films: Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and Nope (2022). He was the first Black screenwriter to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

“These feel like images you might have dreamed, both of the kind that slip away and the ones you manage to keep tenuously in your grasp, slippery, otherworldly. . . . Before our eyes, Zanele Muholi transforms into a mother, a domestic worker, an Afrofuturist, an oracle. It’s fiction and it is not.”―Yrsa Daley-Ward, The New York Times Book Review

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is the long-awaited monograph from one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. The book features over ninety of Muholi’s evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi’s radical statements of identity, race, and resistance are a direct response to contemporary and historical racisms. As Muholi states, “I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces―brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves―to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.”

With more than twenty written contributions from curators, poets, and authors, alongside luxurious tritone reproductions of Muholi’s images, Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement.

A multidisciplinary illustrated reader unpacking imperialist representations of Africa by promoting dialogue, memory and everyday practice, and reimagining cultural institutions and the arts—from museums to academia, from architecture to art.

In 2017, curator and art historian Anita N. Bateman and architect and professor Emanuel Admassu initiated research on the traditional positioning and mispositioning of the arts across the African continent. Where Is Africa has been an extended set of exchanges with contemporary artists, curators, designers and academics who are actively engaged in representing the continent—both within and outside its geographic boundaries. By examining artist collectives, new currents in art history and the rise of contemporary art festivals in and about Africa from the past 10 years, the project unpacks the imperialist foundations of cultural institutions and their anthropological fascination with African objects, people and places.

The interviews in Where Is Africa examine African and African-diasporic identities and spaces through questions of positionality in relation to specific disciplinary, cultural and political contexts. The texts address Afro-diasporic aesthetic practices and the curatorial, museological and artistic matrices that confront epistemologies of dominance and exclusion. The commissioned essays and images offer concise methodologies that expand or complicate issues addressed by the interviewees.

Where Is Africa is a conceptual project that accompanies a conceptual place, driven by the desire to dislodge Africa from categorical fixity and the representational logics of nation-states. Africa can never be fully enclosed by the residue of colonial violence or the totalitarian gaze of neoliberalism; instead, it creates infinite malleability, where place and concept are untethered from each other.

Contributors include: Mikael Awake, Salome Asega, Tau Tavengwa, Anthony Bogues, Jay Simple, Eric Gottesman, Rebecca Corey, Aida Mulkozi, Rakeb Sile, Mesai Haileleul, Mpho Matsipa, Naiama Safia Sandy, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Rehema Chachage, Robel Temesgen, Valerie Amani, Meskerem Assegued, Elias Sime, Olalekan Jeyifous, Amanda Williams, Germane Barnes and Mario Gooden.

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A groundbreaking A-Z survey of the work of over 300 modern and contemporary artists born or based in Africa

Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art.

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From the dynamite husband-and-wife duo behind CreativeSoul Photography comes GLORY, a photography book that shatters the conventional standards of beauty for Black children.

With stunning images of natural hair and gorgeous, inventive visual storytelling, GLORY puts Black beauty front and center with more than 100 breathtaking photographs and a collection of powerful essays about the children. At its heart, it is a recognition and celebration of the versatility and innate beauty of Black hair, and Black beauty. The glorious coffee-table book pays homage to the story of our royal past, celebrates the glory of the here and now, and even dares to forecast the future.

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With iconic imagery and engrossing text, Black TV is the first book of its kind to celebrate the groundbreaking, influential, and often under-appreciated shows centered on Black people and their experiences from the last fifty years.
 
Over the past decade, television has seen an explosion of acclaimed and influential debut storytellers including Issa Rae (Insecure), Donald Glover (Atlanta), and Michaela Coel (I May Destroy You). This golden age of Black television would not be possible without the actors, showrunners, and writers that worked for decades to give voice to the Black experience in America.
 
Written by veteran TV reporter Bethonie Butler, Black TV tells the stories behind the pioneering series that led to this moment, celebrating the laughs, the drama, and the performances we’ve loved over the last fifty years. Beginning with Julia, the groundbreaking sitcom that made Diahann Carroll the first Black woman to lead a prime-time network series as something other than a servant, she explores the 1960s and 1970s as an era of unprecedented representation, with shows like Soul Train, Roots, and The Jeffersons. She unpacks the increasingly nuanced comedies of the 1980s from 227 to A Different World, and how they paved the way for the ’90s Black-sitcom boom that gave us The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Living Single. Butler also looks at the visionary comedians—from Flip Wilson to the Wayans siblings to Dave Chappelle—and connects all these achievements to the latest breakthroughs in television with showrunners like Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, and Quinta Brunson leading the charge.
 
With dozens of photographs reminding readers of memorable moments and scenes, Butler revisits breakout performances and important guest appearances, delivering some overdue accolades along the way. So, put on your Hillman sweatshirt, make some popcorn, and get ready for a dyn-o-mite retrospective of the most groundbreaking and entertaining shows in television history.

An accessible and popular introduction to African photography and film from the mid-twentieth century to the present day

Drawing from archival imagery and documents, interviews with the photographers and filmmakers (in some cases family members and/ or close associates), and with contributions from writers, scholars, and curators, The African Gaze is a mapping of and an introduction to the postcolonial African moving and still image.

In The African Gaze, based on the university course of the same title, author Amy Sall looks at ways in which artistic expression in photography and cinema engendered discourses concerning identity, power, and self-determination.

Colonial photography deprived Africans of agency, rendered them voiceless, and classified them as subaltern. In colonial photography, African people were subjected to a physical positioning and gaze which took away their autonomy and allowed western viewers to perceive them as primitive. African photographers and filmmakers from just before independence and onward (and in some cases even earlier), were able to reclaim this power and allow their communities to see themselves as they were, and explore their social, economic, and political conditions from their own perspective.

This is a timely publication as engagement with Black and African histories is stronger than ever before (and long overdue). The major names of African photography, such as Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory, and Seydou Keita have become highly collectible in the art market and African cinema, pioneered by Ousmane Sembene in 1960s Senegal, is now recognized for its creative innovation and storytelling.

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From knitting expert Brandi Harper, a must-have pattern book for modern knitters, with essays on self-care and sourcing creativity

There is no such thing as being kind-of a knitter—the wobbly scarves and that oversized sweater you tried to shrink all count too. Each contribution that you make to the world through knitting is meaningful, but maybe you’ve slowed your commitment to this craft, or you can’t seem to find the time to be creative. There’s a lot to be distracted by, and the path forward isn’t always clear. Brandi Harper aims to bring those challenges to the forefront and help you unearth the immense benefits that knitting has to offer. In her debut book, Knitting for Radical Self-Care, Harper offers tips and suggestions for carving out time for creativity, alongside beautiful patterns to try yourself. The book includes ten original patterns inspired by revolutionary women of color, and Harper will speak to these women and their immense impact on her life and our world. The patterns include detailed instructions, alongside her original prose, all designed to inspire.

What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists

This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.

Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.

Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.

Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Norman Lewis, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.