In this volume, ten leading scholars examine the contradictions of modernity and Black agency that continue to define the Western art world. Illustrated essays explore the work of artists such as Roy DeCarava, Ben Enwonwu, James Hampton, Norman Lewis, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Augusta Savage, and Carrie Mae Weems, always with an eye toward reframing our understanding of Black artistic producers. The interdisciplinary avenues of inquiry remake the boundaries of modernist art—its notions time and again focused on the singular white male European or American artist—with another set of imperatives, ethics, and histories, broadening our understanding of the past and present of modernism.

Three generations of fiercely strong and stubborn Mexican American women face grief head-on as they attempt to shed generational trauma and discover the true meaning of home in this lyrical novel that features magical realism in the tradition of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and The House of the Spirits.

For generations, the Olivares women have sought to control their daughters’ destinies, starting with their names. In life, Olvido constantly clashed with her carefree daughter. Then teenage Angustias discovered she was pregnant and left her mother’s home in search of her own. Ten years later, Felicitas finally meets her estranged grandmother and is terribly disappointed when Olvido is nothing like a grandmother should be. She is strict, cold, and…dead.

Now, Olvido is convinced the only way her spirit will cross over is if she resolves her unfinished business—to make sure Angustias is in a better place regarding family, job, husband, and God, but maybe not in that order—and Felicitas is the only person who can see or hear her. Heartbroken about her mother’s passing and desperate to put Olvido’s tiny Texas home in her rearview mirror as quickly as possible, Angustias doesn’t understand why suddenly everyone in town seems to be conspiring to set her up with every eligible bachelor in town, offer her jobs, and invite her and Felicitas to church every Sunday.

As Olvido attempts to puppeteer her granddaughter to “fix” Angustias’s life from beyond the grave, Angustias tries desperately to find a better place for Felicitas, and Felicitas struggles to keep her ability to see the dead a secret from Angustias, all three Olivares girls are forced to learn how to actually listen to one another, to work to overcome generations’ worth of well-intentioned mistakes and learn the true definition of home.

"Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height - the greater public panicked in quarantine - and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn't recovered from the effects of a recent Covid case. Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of woodland only to find the last person he ever expected to see again: Alice, a former lover from his art school days. Their relationship was tumultuous and destructive, ultimately ending when she ghosted him and left for America with his best friend and fellow artist, Rob. In the twenty years since, their fortunes could not be more different: as Jay teeters on the edge of collapse, Alice and Rob have found prosperity in a life surrounded by beauty. Ashamed, Jay hopes she won't recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask; when she does, she invites him to recover on the property - where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well - setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion. Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind"--