PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: April 29, 2025

Based on over a decade of research, a powerful, moving work of narrative nonfiction that illuminates the little-known world of the anexos of Mexico City, the informal addiction treatment centers where mothers send their children to escape the violence of the drug war.

The Way That Leads Among the Lost reveals a hidden place where care and violence are impossible to separate: the anexos of Mexico City. The prizewinning anthropologist Angela Garcia takes us deep into the world of these small rooms, informal treatment centers for alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness, spread across Mexico City’s tenements and reaching into the United States. Run and inhabited by Mexico’s most marginalized populations, they are controversial for their illegality and their use of coercion. Yet for many Mexican families desperate to keep their loved ones safe, these rooms offer something of a refuge from what lies beyond them―the intensifying violence surrounding the drug war.

This is the first book ever written on the anexos. Garcia, who spent a decade conducting anthropological fieldwork in Mexico City, draws readers into their many dimensions, casting light on the mothers and their children who are entangled in this hidden world. Following the stories of its denizens, she asks what these places are, why they exist, and what they reflect about Mexico and the wider world. With extraordinary empathy and a sharp eye for detail, Garcia attends to the lives that the anexos both sustain and erode, wrestling with the question of why mothers turn to them as a site of refuge even as they reproduce violence. Woven into these portraits is Garcia’s own powerful story of family, childhood, homelessness, and drugs―a blend of ethnography and memoir converging on a set of fundamental questions about the many forms and meanings that violence, love, care, family, and hope may take.

Infused with profound ethnographic richness and moral urgency, The Way That Leads Among the Lost is a stunning work of narrative nonfiction, a book that will leave a deep mark on readers.

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: February 11, 2025

One of the world's greatest revolutionary leaders, Amílcar Cabral's long and arduous campaign for the liberation of Portuguese-dominated Africa is explored in this vivid compilation of his most influential speeches and writings.

Unity and Struggle is the compelling account of Amílcar Cabral's fight against imperialism, discrimination and injustice, as well as his progressive advocacy for religious toleration and gender equality – all of which combined to make him one of Africa's foremost political leaders.

Introduction by Basil Davidson.

'One of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa' Fidel Castro
'Figures like Amílcar Cabral... helped us to imagine the horizons of freedom in far broader terms than were available to us through what we now call "civil rights discourse".' Angela Davis

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: April 15, 2025

From the creator of “a unified field theory of racism” (NPR’s Planet Money), a dollars-and-cents reckoning of the state of Black America and a new framework to close the power gap

Historically, Black Americans’ quest for power has been understood as an attempt to gain equal protections under the law. But power in America requires more than basic democratic freedoms. It is inextricably linked with economic influence and ownership―of one’s self, home, business, and creations.

Andre M. Perry draws on extensive research and analysis to quantify how much power Black Americans actually have. Ranging from property, business, and wealth to education, health, and social mobility, Black Power Scorecard moves across the country, evaluating people’s ability to set the rules of the game and calculating how that translates into the ultimate means of power―life itself, and the longevity of Black communities. Along the way, Perry identifies woefully overlooked areas of investment that could close the racial gap and benefit all.

An expansive take on power supported by documentation and data, Black Power Scorecard is a fresh contribution to the country’s reckoning with structural inequality, one that offers a new approach to redressing it.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: February 4, 2025

From the celebrated author of Freedom Dreams, a thought-provoking look at how the multicolored urban working class are the solution—not the problem—to the ills of American cities

A limited Beacon Classics edition, with a gorgeous spot gloss cover and retro, classic palette

In this classic work, acclaimed historian Robin D. G. Kelley undermines false perceptions of Black culture to highlight how grassroots movements hold the key to revolutionizing urban America.

Starting with an insightful look at street culture—from the “dozens” to pick-up basketball—Kelley shows how these misunderstandings of Black culture are at the center of the failure of public policy, scholarship and social movements to save our cities. He critiques both conservatives and liberals for ignoring what these cultural forms mean for their practitioners. Blending wit, intellect, and historical detail, he offers groundbreaking analyses of the multicultural roots of Black urban culture and the mistakes of the labor movement in denying the importance of cultural factors.

With Kelley’s crucial insights as timely now as when they were first published, this repackaged edition of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! shows how the most heartening progress toward a better future for urban America is revealed in urban grassroots movements.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: March 11, 2025

Combining vivid storytelling, astonishing imagination and careful research, this is the ultimate collection of African folklore, with 50 entertaining tales and commentary from noted folklorist Helen Nde, presented in a beautiful, foiled gift package.

From creation myths and foundation legends to fascinating stories of human relationships and amusing animal tales, these stories provide a diverse look at the countries and cultures across the African continent. Noted folklorist Helen Nde also provides marvellous context for history and colonial influences for the stories.

Read 50 stories that take you north to Egypt, west to Sierra Leone, east to Somalia, south to South Africa and many places in-between. Discover the geographical and cultural variety of the continent with stories such as:

* FROM ALGERIA: "The Story of the First Man and Woman", who meet when they struggle over access to a well, but go on to have 100 children and start the human race.
* FROM SUDAN: "Okwa and the River Maiden", a tale about the great-grandson of the first man who seeks the river spirit's approval to marry two river maidens, half women and half crocodiles.
* FROM ZIMBABWE: "The Moon and His Wives", a story about the first man who pleads with the creator to become mortal and go to earth, where the first star becomes his companion.
* FROM GHANA: "How Goat Caused a War" by tricking the Supreme Being and giving his holy message to the wrong prince.
* FROM TANZANIA: "The Singing Kaguru Birds", who offer help and riches to poor folk in exchange for a strict rule or even a trick.

Carefully researched and vividly retold these stories represent a vital and fresh perspective on African Folktales for anyone interested in folktales, mythology and storytelling from around the world.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: March 18, 2025

A powerful, incisive reckoning with the impacts of school desegregation that traces four generations of the author’s family to show how the implementation of integration decimated Black school systems and did much of the Black community a disservice

On May 17, 1954 the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education determined that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Heralded as a massive victory for civil rights, the decision's goal was to give Black children equitable access to educational opportunities and clear a path to a better future. Yet in the years following the ruling, schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods were shuttered or saw their funding dwindle, Black educators were fired en masse, and Black children faced discrimination and violence from their white peers as they joined resource-rich schools that were ill-prepared for the influx of new students.

Award-winning interdisciplinary scholar of education and Black history Noliwe Rooks weaves together sociological data and cultural history to challenge the idea that integration was a boon for Black children. She tells the story of her grandparents, who were among the thousands of Black teachers fired following the Brown decision; her father, who was traumatized by his experiences at an almost exclusively-white school; her own experiences moving from a flourishing, racially diverse school to an underserved inner-city one; and finally her son and his Black peers, who over half-century after Brown still struggle with hostility and prejudice from white teachers and students alike. She also shows how present-day discrimination lawsuits directly stem from the mistakes made during integration.

At once assiduously researched and deeply engaging, Integrated tells the story of how education has remained both a tool for community progress and a seemingly inscrutable cultural puzzle. Rooks' deft hand turns the story of integration's past and future on it's head, and shows how we may better understand and support generations of students to come.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: February 18, 2025

A poignant, unflinching study of black grief as a form of elegy found in visual art, music, literature—everywhere, if you know how to see it.

In Black Elegies, Kimberly Juanita Brown examines the form of the elegy and its unique capacity to convey the elongated grief borne of sustained racial violence. Structured around the sensorial, the book moves through sight, sound, and touch to reveal what Okwui Enwezor calls the “national emergency of black grief.” With her characteristic literary skill, Brown analyzes the work of major figures including Toni Morrison, Carrie Mae Weems, Audre Lorde, and Marvin Gaye, among others.

Brown contemplates recognizable sites of mourning: forced migration and enslavement, bodily violations, imprisonment and death. And she examines sites that do not register immediately as archives of grief: the landscape of southern U.S. slave plantations, a spontaneous street party, a quilt constructed out of the clothing worn by a loved one, a dance performance to hold the memory of history, and an aeolian harp installed at an institute of European art, among others. In this, the book offers a framework of mourning while black, within the parameters of contemporary artistic production. Brown asks: How do you mourn those you are not supposed to see? And where does the grief go? She shows us that grief is everywhere: “It spills out of photographs and modulates music. It hovers in the tenor and tone of cinematic performances. It resides in the body like an inspired concept, waiting for its articulation.”

An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection

After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied.

It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete.

Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: January 28, 2025

In the spirit of Evicted, a property law scholar uses the story of two grandfathers—one white, one black—who arrived in Detroit at the turn of the twentieth century to reveal how racist policies weaken Black families, widen the racial wealth gap, and derive profit from pain. 

When Professor Bernadette Atuahene moved to Detroit, she planned to study the city’s squatting phenomenon. What she accidentally found was too urgent to ignore. Her neighbors, many of whom had owned their homes for decades, were losing them to property tax foreclosure, leaving once bustling Black neighborhoods blighted with vacant homes.
 
Through years of dogged investigation and research, Atuahene uncovered a system of predatory governance, where public officials raise public dollars through laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity—a nationwide practice in no way limited to Detroit.
 
In this powerful work of scholarship and storytelling, Atuahene shows how predatory governance invites complicity from well-meaning people, eviscerates communities, and widens the racial wealth gap. By following the lives of two Detroit grandfathers—one Black the other white—and their grandchildren, Atuahene tells a riveting tale about racist policies, how they take root, why they flourish, and who profits.

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: January 14, 2025

From an MSNBC Political Analyst, a riveting account of the legendary party hosted by Diahann Carroll for Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign, which changed the playing field for Black women in politics.

In 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm broke the ice in American politics when she became the first Black woman to run for president of the United States. Chisholm left behind a coalition-building model personified by a once-in-an-era Hollywood party hosted by legendary actress and singer Diahann Carroll, and attended by the likes of Huey P. Newton, Barbara Lee, Berry Gordy, David Frost, Flip Wilson, Goldie Hawn and others. In A More Perfect Party, MSNBC political analyst Juanita Tolliver presents a path to people-centered politics through the lens of this soiree, with surprising parallels to our current electoral reality.

Chisholm worked the crowd of movie stars, media moguls, music executives and activists gathered at Carroll's opulent Beverly Hills home, forging relationships with laughter as she urged guests to unify behind her campaign. With the feminist movement on the rise and eighteen- to twenty-year-olds voting for the first time in American history, the Democratic Party and the nation were on the cusp of long-overdue change.

Zooming in on one party attendee per chapter, A More Perfect Party brings this whimsical event out of the margins of history to demonstrate that there is an opportunity for all of us to fight for a better nation and return power to the people.

A bold guide for connecting across differences―even those that seem impossible

“Wise and visionary, powell helps us find the courage to forge connections with others, the earth, and ourselves in order to transform the world from the inside out.” ―Valarie Kaur, bestselling author of See No Stranger and Sage Warrior

We don’t want to live in a society in turmoil. In fact, 93 percent of people in the US want to reduce divisiveness, and 86 percent believe it’s possible to disagree in a healthy way. Yet with increasing political and social fragmentation, many of us don’t know how to move past our differences. Civil rights scholar john a. powell presents an actionable path through “bridging” that helps us communicate, coexist, and imagine a new story for our shared future where we all belong.

With inimitable warmth and vision, powell offers a framework for building cohesion and solidarity between disparate beliefs and backgrounds. Bridging is more than a discrete list of actions to follow―it’s a mindset we can develop to help us foster belonging and connection. Key elements of the bridging mindset include:

• Understanding how deeply “othering” shapes our world, priming us to see difference of any kind―race, gender, political orientation, etcetera―as a threat
• Identifying where “breaking” happens, when people are excluded or treated differently for being perceived as other
• Embracing “belonging” as one of our core human needs―we all want to feel seen, valued, and appreciated just as we are
• Committing ourselves to treat all people like they belong
• Allowing ourselves grace when we inevitably fall short―and resolving to try again

Throughout the book, powell shares personal reflections as well as practices to help you begin bridging wherever you are―in your community, friendships, family, workplace―even with those whom you might never have imagined you could find common ground.

“Bridging is a salve for our fractured world,” powell says. “We can overcome the illusion of separateness by honoring our differences, transcending the notion that difference divides us, and instead cocreate a world where everyone belongs.”

When inclusion into the fold of citizenship is conditioned by a social group’s conceit to ritual violence, humiliation, and exploitation, what can anti-citizenship offer us?

The Promise of Youth Anti-citizenship argues that Black youth and youth of color have been cast as anti-citizens, disenfranchised from the social, political, and economic mainstream of American life. Instead of asking youth to conform to a larger societal structure undergirded by racial capitalism and antiblackness, the volume’s contributors propose that the collective practice of anti-citizenship opens up a liberatory space for youth to challenge the social order.

The chapters cover an array of topics, including Black youth in the charter school experiment in post-Katrina New Orleans; racial capitalism, the queering of ethnicity, and the 1980s Salvadoran migration to South Central Los Angeles; the notion of decolonizing classrooms through Palestinian liberation narratives; and more. Through a range of methodological approaches and conceptual interventions, this collection illuminates how youth negotiate and exercise anti-citizenship as forms of either resistance or refusal in response to coercive patriotism, cultural imperialism, and predatory capitalism.

Pennsylvania State Senator Nikil Saval tells the story of an unlikely partnership between June Jordan and R. Buckminster Fuller, and their attempt to reimagine Harlem in the wake of the 1964 riots.

In the tense days leading up to the 2020 American elections, then-candidate for Pennsylvania State Senate Nikil Saval addressed a virtual audience at the Harvard GSD to tell a story about Black feminist writer June Jordan and a little-known project that resulted from the aftermath of the 1964 Harlem riot. The events of police brutality and community grieving made a lasting impression on Jordan, who, while known for her work as a poet, playwright, and activist, responded with a proposal for a multiple-tower housing design. Through an unlikely partnership with R. Buckminster Fuller, Jordan’s “Skyrise for Harlem” project offered a Futuristic vision for Harlem that argued for environmental redesign: “it is architecture, conceived of in its fullest meaning as the creation of environment, which may actually determine the pace, pattern, and quality of living experience.”
 
Jordan was not an architect in the conventional sense, Saval says. “But in the understanding of someone who sought to propose and build interventions in public space, she was.”

A powerful and revealing history of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which have been essential for empowering Black citizens and for the ongoing fight for democracy in the US.

From their founding, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) educated as many as 90 percent of Black college students in the United States. Although many are aware of the significance of HBCUs in expanding Black Americans' educational opportunities, much less attention has been paid to the vital role that they have played in enhancing American democracy.

In The Power of Black Excellence, Deondra Rose provides an authoritative history of HBCUs and the unique role they have played in shaping American democracy since 1837. Drawing on over six years of deep research, Rose brings into view the historic impact that government support for HBCUs has had on the American political landscape, arguing that they have been essential for not only empowering Black citizens but also reshaping the distribution of political power in the United States. Rose challenges the conventional wisdom that, prior to the late twentieth century, the federal government took a laissez-faire approach to education. Instead, governmental action contributed to the expansion of HBCUs in an era plagued by racist policies and laws. Today, HBCUs remain extremely important, as evidenced by the outsized number of black political leaders--including Kamala Harris--who attended them. Rose stresses that policymakers promote democracy itself when they support HBCUs and their unique approach to postsecondary education, which includes a commitment to helping students develop politically empowering skills, promoting political leadership, and fostering a commitment to service.

A fresh look into the relationship between education and democracy, The Power of Black Excellence is essential reading for anyone interested not just in HBCUs, but the broader trajectory of Black citizenship in American history.

Talking to the Dead is an ethnography of seven Gullah/Geechee women from the South Carolina lowcountry. These women communicate with their ancestors through dreams, prayer, and visions and traditional crafts and customs, such as storytelling, basket making, and ecstatic singing in their churches. Like other Gullah/Geechee women of the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, these women, through their active communication with the deceased, make choices and receive guidance about how to live out their faith and engage with the living. LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant emphasizes that this communication affirms the women's spiritual faith-which seamlessly integrates Christian and folk traditions-and reinforces their position as powerful culture keepers within Gullah/Geechee society. By looking in depth at this long-standing spiritual practice, Manigault-Bryant highlights the subversive ingenuity that lowcountry inhabitants use to thrive spiritually and to maintain a sense of continuity with the past.

In Stigma and Culture, J. Lorand Matory provocatively shows how ethnic identification in the United States—and around the globe—is a competitive and hierarchical process in which populations, especially of historically stigmatized races, seek status and income by dishonoring other stigmatized populations. And there is no better place to see this than among the African American elite in academia, where he explores the emergent ethnic identities of African and Caribbean immigrants and transmigrants, Gullah/Geechees, Louisiana Creoles, and even Native Americans of partly African ancestry.  
           
Matory describes the competitive process that hierarchically structures their self-definition as ethnic groups and the similar process by which middle-class African Americans seek distinction from their impoverished compatriots. Drawing on research at universities such as Howard, Harvard, and Duke and among their alumni networks, he details how university life—while facilitating individual upward mobility, touting human equality, and regaling cultural diversity—also perpetuates the cultural standards that historically justified the dominance of some groups over others. Combining his ethnographic findings with classic theoretical insights from Frantz Fanon, Fredrik Barth, Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu and others—alongside stories from his own life in academia—Matory sketches the university as an institution that, particularly through the anthropological vocabulary of culture, encourages the stigmatized to stratify their own.

Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore,is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines.

Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.

The future of Honduras begins and ends on the white sand beaches of Tela Bay on the country's northeastern coast where Garifuna, a Black Indigenous people, have resided for over two hundred years. In The Ends of Paradise, Christopher A. Loperena examines the Garifuna struggle for life and collective autonomy, and demonstrates how this struggle challenges concerted efforts by the state and multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, to render both their lands and their culture into fungible tourism products. Using a combination of participant observation, courtroom ethnography, and archival research, Loperena reveals how purportedly inclusive tourism projects form part of a larger neoliberal, extractivist development regime, which remakes Black and Indigenous territories into frontiers of progress for the mestizo majority. The book offers a trenchant analysis of the ways Black dispossession and displacement are carried forth through the conferral of individual rights and freedoms, a prerequisite for resource exploitation under contemporary capitalism.

By demanding to be accounted for on their terms, Garifuna anchor Blackness to Central America―a place where Black peoples are presumed to be nonnative inhabitants―and to collective land rights. Steeped in Loperena's long-term activist engagement with Garifuna land defenders, this book is a testament to their struggle and to the promise of "another world" in which Black and Indigenous peoples thrive.

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: January 28, 2025

An anthology of original essays that examine white supremacy around the globe through the lens of anthropology

White supremacy, an entrenched global system that emerged alongside European colonialism, is based on presumed biological and cultural differences, racist practices, the hypervaluation of whiteness, and the devaluation of nonwhites. Anthropology has been shaped by—and has helped to shape—white supremacy, yet the discipline also offers powerful tools for understanding this system at a global scale. The Anthropology of White Supremacy gathers original essays from a diverse, international group of anthropologists to explore how this phenomenon works both within anthropology and in cultural and political structures around the world.

The book features historical and ethnographic analysis about Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Senegal, South Africa, and the United States, and addresses the ways white supremacy impacts a broad range of issues, including finance, advertising and media representations, militarism, police training, migration, and development.

The Anthropology of White Supremacy demonstrates not only how anthropology can help us to better comprehend white supremacy, but also how the discipline can help us begin to dismantle it.

The contributors include Omolade Adunbi, Samar Al-Bulushi, Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Michael Blakey, Mitzi Uehara Carter, Subhadra Mitra Channa, Celina de Sa, Vanessa Diaz, Britt Halvorson, Faye Harrison, Sarah Ihmoud, Anthony R. Jerry, Darryl Li, Kristín Loftsdóttir, Christopher Loperena, Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, Jemima Pierre, Jean Muteba Rahier, Laurence Ralph, Renya K. Ramirez, Junaid Rana, Joshua Reno, Jonathan Rosa, Shalini Shankar, and Maria Styve.

How medieval-inspired racial feudalism reigned in early America and was challenged by Black liberal thinkers

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Old World. What they saw was a racially stratified country that reflected not the ideals of a modern republic but rather the remnants of feudalism. American Dark Age reveals how defenders of racial hierarchy embraced America’s resemblance to medieval Europe and tells the stories of the abolitionists who exposed it as a glaring blemish on the national conscience.

Against those seeking to maintain what Frederick Douglass called an “aristocracy of the skin,” Keidrick Roy shows how a group of Black thinkers, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hosea Easton, and Harriet Jacobs, challenged the medievalism in their midst—and transformed the nation’s founding liberal tradition. He demonstrates how they drew on spiritual insight, Enlightenment thought, and a homegrown political philosophy that gave expression to their experiences at the bottom of the American social order. Roy sheds new light on how Black abolitionist writers and activists worked to eradicate the pernicious ideology of racial feudalism from American liberalism and renew the country’s commitment to values such as individual liberty, social progress, and egalitarianism.

American Dark Age reveals how the antebellum Black liberal tradition holds vital lessons for us today as hate groups continue to align themselves with fantasies of a medieval past and openly call for a return of all-powerful monarchs, aristocrats, and nobles who rule by virtue of their race.

An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment

Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers.

Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven’t paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime.

While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences.

Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black is a compelling history of understudied anti-colonial movements in this region, exploring how indigenous Oceanic activists intentionally forged international connections with the African world in their fights for liberation.

Drawing from research conducted across Fiji, Australia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Britain, and the United States, Quito Swan shows how liberation struggles in Oceania actively engaged Black internationalism in their diverse battles against colonial rule. Pasifika Black features as its protagonists Oceania's many playwrights, organizers, religious leaders, scholars, Black Power advocates, musicians, environmental justice activists, feminists, and revolutionaries who carried the banners of Black liberation across the globe. It puts artists like Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal and her 1976 call for a Black Pacific into an extended conversation with Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific’s Amelia Rokotuivuna, Samoa’s Albert Wendt, African American anthropologist Angela Gilliam, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, West Papua’s Ben Tanggahma, New Caledonia’s Déwé Gorodey, and Polynesian Panther Will ‘Ilolahia. In so doing, Swan displays the links Oceanic activists consciously and painstakingly formed in order to connect Black metropoles across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: January 21, 2025

Although much Black religious scholarship has engaged with feminist theory and womanist thought, a gap remains where little work has been done in religious studies to investigate the Black male experience. A Misrepresented People explores how African American men grapple with identity and masculinity in relation to Black religious thought. This book counters the dominant portrayal of Black men in American society as suspicious, morally defective, and irredeemable, and showcases the strength and relevance of Black religious thought in developing alternative notions of Black manhood.

Drawing on womanist discourses, African American religious thought, literature, and Black male studies, as well as an examination of the writings and sermons of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr., Darrius D’wayne Hills offers a vision of Black male identity that is grounded in interpersonal relationships and connection. Positioning identity formation as a religious concern, Hills expands the application of religious scholarship toward the complex social and material realities faced by Black men. In doing so, this volume offers a much-needed new model for understanding Black male gender identity, illustrating how religious thought fosters more holistic and livable futures for African American men.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: January 28, 2025

Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these health disparities are not attributed to behavioral differences or biology, but to the pervasive devaluation of Black bodies.

Womanist Bioethics addresses this crisis from a bioethical standpoint. It offers a critique of mainstream bioethics as having embraced the perspective of its mainly white, male progenitors, limiting the extent to which it is positioned to engage the issues that particularly affect vulnerable populations. This book makes the provocative but essential case that because African American women– across almost every health indicator– fare worse than others. We must not only include, but center, Black women’s experiences and voices in bioethics discourse and practice.

To this end, Womanist Bioethics develops the first specifically womanist form of bioethics, focused on the diverse vulnerabilities and multiple oppressions that women of color face. This innovative womanist bioethics is grounded in the Black Christian prophetic tradition, based on the ideas that God does not condone oppression and that it is imperative to defend those who are vulnerable. It also draws on womanist theology and Black liberation theology, which take similar stances. At its core, the volume offers a new, broad-based approach to bioethics that is meant as a corrective to mainstream bioethics’ privileging of white, particularly male, experiences, and it outlines ways in which hospitals, churches, and the larger community can better respond to the healthcare needs of Black women.

Charts the changing dynamics of religion and spirituality among African Americans

Recent decades have ushered in a profound transformation within the American religious landscape, characterized by an explosion of religious diversification and individualism as well as a rising number of “nones.” The Contemporary Black Church makes the case that the story of this changing religious landscape needs to be told incorporating more data as it applies specifically to African Americans.

Jason E. Shelton draws from survey data as well as interviews with individuals from a wide variety of religious backgrounds to argue that social reforms and the resulting freedoms have paved the way for a pronounced diversification among African Americans in matters of faith. Many African Americans have switched denominational affiliations within the Black Church, others now adhere to historically White traditions, and a record number of African Americans have left organized religion altogether in recent decades. These changing demographics and affiliations are having a real and measurable effect on American politics, particularly as members of the historic Black Church are much more likely than those of other faiths to vote and to strongly support government policies aimed at bridging the racial divide.

Though not the first work to note that African Americans are not monolithic in their religious affiliation, or to argue that there is a trend toward secularism in Black America, this book is the first to substantiate these claims with extensive empirical data, charting these changing dynamics and their ramifications for American society and politics.

New York Times-bestselling author adrienne maree brown knows we need each other more than ever, and offers “loving corrections”: a roadmap towards collective power, righting wrongs, and true belonging 

This selection of prescient, compassionate essays explores patterns we engage in that are rooted in limited thinking. Through a lens of “loving correction” rather than mere critique, author adrienne maree brown helps us reimagine how to hold ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities accountable by setting clear boundaries, engaging in reflection, and nurturing honest relationships.

Loving Corrections is divided into two sections, with the first portion featuring new essays including “A Word for White People” and “Relinquishing the Patriarchy” and writing on topics like moving from fragility to fortitude, disability, and navigating critique within activist communities. The second section expands and updates pieces from brown's popular monthly column “Murmurations” in YES! Magazine that explore accountability—within oneself and community—with depth, inventiveness, and empathy.

Along with allowing us more authentic access to ourselves and to each other, the “corrections” in the book’s title are intended to explore and break identity-based patterns including white supremacy, fragility, patriarchy, and ableism. brown also offers practical guidance on how to apologize and be accountable from our nuanced positions of power, history, and resources.

Building on her previous work—especially Holding Change and We Will Not Cancel Us—brown reminds us how much we need each other: "It is only through relationship that we learn how to be, understand our impact on others and explore small shifts that may yield remarkable collective change."

PRE-ORDER: On sale December 24, 2024

 The world and its politics are becoming ever more polarised, leaving no room for the light and the shade. In The Half of It, Emma and Nicole will explore race and identity through the lens of the mixed race experience, creating a space for discussion and illuminating the true nuances of the mixed-race identity and what this really means.

In The Half of It, Emma and Nicole, hosts of the critically acclaimed podcast Mixed Up, will discuss what it truly means to be mixed-race and all the different layers that fall into this. They will delve into everything from culture and identity, to interracial relationships, to adoption, to understanding the historical context of mixed-race people – and ultimately culminating in a rounder and deeper appreciation for the mixed-identity.

They will illuminate us on their own experiences of growing up mixed, interweaving guest interviews and insights from people they talk to along the way.

Emma and Nicole want to break down barriers and open up a deeper dialogue of the mixed-race experience. Although this was born out of a desire to speak directly to the mixed-race community, they discovered there is something in it for everyone. Whether you are mixed, you know someone mixed, if you have ever considered dating outside of your race, if you’re a parent committed to exposing your child to a more diverse view of the world, or indeed an adult committed to expanding your view of culture and identity – this is for you.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: January 14, 2025

An essential exploration of the overlooked impact of disordered eating among Black women—and a prescriptive road map to returning to peace and wholeness within our bodies, from the clinical therapist who founded Black and Embodied Counseling and Consulting PLLC

Food has always been a political tool for the oppressor. And the body, especially the Black body, has always been one of its many battlegrounds.

Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, the myriad effects of racial trauma have disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies—and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently overlooked by doctors and mental health experts. As a result, entire communities—our most vulnerable communities—are forced to navigate systems that are already primed to dismiss their needs, leaving them without proper care, or often even the language they need to identify what’s wrong.

McCullough’s groundbreaking work radically validates the lived experiences and generational traumas of BIPOC communities. As part of a steadily growing movement among clinicians to “decolonize therapy,” McCullough rejects the patriarchal, white supremacist mindset that has dominated the field, and instead embraces a more integrated approach that seeks to understand disordered eating patterns by examining the psychological wounds left by centuries of racism.

Weaving together crucial history, compelling client stories, guided practice, and McCullough’s own experiences with disordered eating behaviors, Reclaiming the Black Body is a revealing, potentially life-saving book that illuminates the way home, back to the safety and comfort found within our bodies.

A vital path home. Employing African epistemologies and an embodied African beingness, this book embraces the revelation and miracle of Blackness.

Creating a world worthy of our children requires recalling the dignity and distinction of the African way of life.

This book is not written for settler consumption. Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms.

Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.

Structured in three parts—Remember, Refuse, and Reclaim—Kindred Creation is a philosophical guidebook and a vital invitation to power and reconnection. Davis employs parable, poetry, theory, memory, narrative, and prophecy to help readers:

* Remember: By unforgetting the unending and cascading violence of settler colonialism and other forms of domination and exploring the ways that African land, language, lifestyle, and labor are stolen, distorted, and repackaged for colonial consumption to extract capital and sever ties to ancestral knowledge, lifeways, and dignity

* Refuse: By rejecting and interrupting death-making institutions and relationships and choosing kinship and self-determination in the face of settler colonial violence

* Reclaim: By revealing that freedom is within us—and within reach. Davis shares how the reader can birth new worlds and relationships and offers strategies for reclaiming land, language, lifestyle, and labor.

The colonial violence and dispossession of African land, language, and labor is inflicted intentionally—and by design. Reclaiming African lifeways and remembering what was forcibly forgotten must be by creation: a re-membering of our interconnectedness and kinship.

In Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks reflects on the ways in which the emotional health of black women has been and continues to be impacted by sexism and racism. Desiring to create a context where black females could both work on their individual efforts for self actualization while remaining connected to a larger world of collective struggle, hooks articulates the link between self recovery and political resistance. Both an expression of the joy of self healing and the need to be ever vigilant in the struggle for equality, Sisters of the Yam continues to speak to the experience of black womanhood.

Many of the earliest Africans to arrive in the Americas came to Central America with Spanish colonists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and people of African descent constituted the majority of nonindigenous populations in the region long thereafter. Yet in the development of national identities and historical consciousness, Central American nations have often countenanced widespread practices of social, political, and regional exclusion of blacks. The postcolonial development of mestizo or mixed-race ideologies of national identity have systematically downplayed African ancestry and social and political involvement in favor of Spanish and Indian heritage and contributions. In addition, a powerful sense of place and belonging has led many peoples of African descent in Central America to identify themselves as something other than African American, reinforcing the tendency of local and foreign scholars to see Central America as peripheral to the African diaspora in the Americas. The essays in this collection begin to recover the forgotten and downplayed histories of blacks in Central America, demonstrating the centrality of African Americans to the region’s history from the earliest colonial times to the present. They reveal how modern nationalist attempts to define mixed-race majorities as “Indo-Hispanic,” or as anything but African American, clash with the historical record of the first region of the Americas in which African Americans not only gained the right to vote but repeatedly held high office, including the presidency, following independence from Spain in 1821.

Contributors. Rina Cáceres Gómez, Lowell Gudmundson, Ronald Harpelle, Juliet Hooker, Catherine Komisaruk, Russell Lohse, Paul Lokken, Mauricio Meléndez Obando, Karl H. Offen, Lara Putnam, Justin Wolfe

In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx—a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism.

Claudia Cumberbatch Jones was born in Trinidad. In 1924, she moved to New York, where she lived for the next thirty years. She was active in the Communist Party from her early twenties onward. A talented writer and speaker, she traveled throughout the United States lecturing and organizing. In the early 1950s, she wrote a well-known column, “Half the World,” for the Daily Worker. As the U.S. government intensified its efforts to prosecute communists, Jones was arrested several times. She served nearly a year in a U.S. prison before being deported and given asylum by Great Britain in 1955. There she founded The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News and the Caribbean Carnival, an annual London festival that continues today as the Notting Hill Carnival. Boyce Davies examines Jones’s thought and journalism, her political and community organizing, and poetry that the activist wrote while she was imprisoned. Looking at the contents of the FBI file on Jones, Boyce Davies contrasts Jones’s own narration of her life with the federal government’s. Left of Karl Marx establishes Jones as a significant figure within Caribbean intellectual traditions, black U.S. feminism, and the history of communism.