This is a spiritual guidebook on how to successfully use the ancestral energy of cultural sheroes and heroes in the fight against persecution, privilege, white supremacy, reproduction restrictions, and LGBTQIA+ discrimination. This is a war manual intent on aiding its readers with the specifics of how to thrive in a world hell-bent on our annihilation.

By working magick with the 12 Hoodoo saints in this book, we learn how to create a more balanced society that supports and honors all BIPOC and AAPI folks. Using the tools in book, readers will explore everyday ways to tell the world, "I matter, and I refuse to be silenced." Conjuring the Calabash author Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani introduces these revolutionary warriors and explains why their energy is necessary right now. She even teaches how to canonize our own elevated ancestor or spiritual icon.

Hoodoo is conjure; it is rootwork; it is Black folks' spiritual hygiene and a weapon for social change. Hoodoo is a way of communicating with the universal spirits; it is a channeling of powerful and beloved figures. This book shares inspiring stories, shows how to incorporate those saints into daily spell work, and expands any practitioner's repertoire through rituals, dice divination, altar work, and more.

A major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers―including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today―We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

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.

ELIZABETH GREGORY BOOK PARTY ONLY: This preorder is exclusively for the August 27 event. Preordered books will be available for pickup at the offsite event location on August 27.

An urgent and clear-eyed look at the battles over reproductive control and women’s work in our tipping-point moment—and how to forge a path forward.

Reliable birth control has enabled the rising percentage of planned births over the past 35 years,allowing women to enter the paid workforce and civic life in significant numbers for the first time in recorded history. While many Americans embrace these changes, those who see themselves as benefiting from the old hierarchies resist this progress with divisive rhetoric.

In The Real Domestic Product, fertility researcher Elizabeth Gregory argues that our battles over abortion and LGBTQ bans, pronatalism, and DEI are economic at base—that conservatives seek to push women out of civic life through forced childbearing. Their goal? To maintain their discount on domestic labor (getting the work of childrearing done for “free”) and a steady supply of low-wage workers (desperate parents who must take any job to feed the baby).

By connecting the dots among shifting fertility patterns, economics, climate change, equitable work, expanding longevity, and the rising status of formerly excluded groups, Gregory counters reactionary narratives. She demonstrates that a caring democracy and an end to systemic poverty can engender critical advantages for our economy and for our fragile planet.

Never more urgently needed, The Real Domestic Product envisions the way forward to an economy of care for our planet and its people.

A boundary-breaking astrophysicist reimagines the universe—and our place within it—in this audacious journey through the Nine Realms of the cosmos.

The universe gave rise to everything: stars and cells, minds and memories, purpose and pain. But it doesn’t care about us. It follows its own rules. And now, according to Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, we finally understand enough about those rules to ask the big questions like we mean it: Why do we exist? Are we alone? How did we get here? What comes next? And—perhaps most urgently—is there reason to hope?

Heck yeah, there is!

Dr. Oluseyi is no ordinary scientist. A former street kid turned world-renowned cosmologist, he realized something bold: The story of existence can be told as a passage through nine interwoven realms—each revealing a new layer of cosmic truth.

There’s the Middle Realm, where we live; the Realm of Life, where organisms flourish across the vastness of space; the Cosmological Realm, where galaxies dance and collide; the Dark Realm, dominated by unseen energy and invisible forces; the Quantum Realm, where reality defies intuition; the Temporal Realm, where time begins, flows, and perhaps ends; the Multiverse Realm, where our universe may be one among many; the Realm Beyond Horizons, where observation breaks down; and the Realm of Imagination, where insight, curiosity, and creativity shape our understanding of it all.

In Why Do We Exist?, Dr. Oluseyi cracks open these realms with clarity, humor, and radical honesty, bridging cutting-edge physics, personal narrative, and philosophy. The result is a blueprint for understanding reality itself and a surprising case for human potential in an indifferent cosmos.

This isn’t just a science book. It’s a survival manual for the universally curious.

A fierce exposé of the resistance to believing Black people and its devastating effects throughout American history.

From Reconstruction to Redemption, from the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation to the execution of the Southern strategy, from 2020’s multiracial protests to the swift elimination of policies etching out a more inclusive society, Americans regularly experience periods of racial reckoning followed by walloping retrenchment.

In Black Evidence, political scientist Candis Watts Smith shows that this pattern is the result of an American habit: denying the truths about our society that Black people experience and remember. Smith then delivers a warning: the effects of this habit ripple out, dulling our ability to identify the signs of authoritarianism and heightening our tolerance for cruelty. Still, she shows how these same truths offer models to overcome our repeated predicament.

Through a curation of critical moments across four centuries, Smith invites us to review the evidence that has been obscured, distorted, and denied. She rigorously investigates the practices that turn Black witnesses into liars in the court room, Black patients into superbodies that don’t feel pain in health care settings, Black people into subhumans in scientific experiments, and Black children into superpredators. She reveals what happens when Black voices are subject to exclusion―their communities are terrorized, their memories are refuted, and their resistance is pathologized.

Written with compassion and tempered optimism, Black Evidence prescribes a cure and encourages readers to practice the skills needed to build a truly multiracial democracy: confront our past, acknowledge the damage of inequality in our present, and listen to the voices of those who experience the problems we wish to solve for an equitable future.

A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context

Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book, the first on this period of the region’s history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Scholars have long held that such distinctions arose during the colonial period, but Gomez shows they developed much earlier.

Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces the exchange of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. Islam’s growth in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A major preoccupation was the question of who could be legally enslaved, which together with other factors led to the construction of new ideas about ethnicity, race, gender, and caste―long before colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.

Telling a radically new story about early Africa in global history, African Dominion is set to be the standard work on the subject for many years to come.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, rapper, and activist--Sister Souljah uses her passionate voice to deliver what is at once a fiercely candid autobiography and a survival manual for any Black woman determined to keep her heart open and her integrity intact in modern America.

Each chapter of No Disrespect is devoted to someone who made a difference in Sister Souljah's life--from the mother who raised her to the men who educated (and mis-educated) her about love--and each bares a controversial truth about the Black condition in America: the disintegration of families; the unremitting combat between the sexes; and the thousand and one ways in which racism continues to circumscribe how Black people see themselves and treat one another.

The result is an outspoken and often courageous rejoinder to the pieties of race, class, and gender by a writer who is at once wise, bawdy, brutally funny, and as sensitive a lightning rod in a thunderstorm.

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This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, revealing and critiquing the realities of Black life in mid-century US

Originally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays "The Harlem Ghetto," "Journey to Atlanta," and "Notes of a Native Son" will appeal to those interested in the personal and political turmoil of Baldwin's life.

“The Harlem Ghetto” introduces readers to the extremities of life in Baldwin’s native city. “Journey to Atlanta” depicts the faulty relationship between the Black community and the politician, following a quartet called The Melodeers on a trip to Atlanta under the auspices of the Progressive Party. Baldwin concludes this collection with “Notes of A Native Son,” a powerful autobiographical essay about his fractured relationship with his father.

The Harlem Ghetto: Essays explores the American condition through a mix of analytic and autobiographical essays. This second collection in the Baldwin centennial anniversary series is Baldwin’s most personal as he grapples with his childhood and his own affinity with Blackness.

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.

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.

In the 19th century, Galveston shores were a gateway for immigrants to Texas and destinations beyond. Slaves, the forced immigrants, were brought to Galveston as property for sale. The largest slave trade operation in Galveston was implemented by Jean Laffite, a pirate. His slave trade business began around 1818. However, for the most part, slaves entering the port of Galveston were destined for other Texas cities and other states. Images of America: African Americans of Galveston presents the community life and accomplishments of Galveston slaves, the descendants of slaves, and descendants of those who migrated to Galveston after the Civil War. The book celebrates Galveston's African American culture from the 1840s to the 1960s.

A delightful romp exploring African traditions around sexual pleasure, with the personal goal of self-discovery and liberation, by one of Africa's preeminent feminists.

While working on her first book, The Sex Lives of African Women, acclaimed feminist and activist Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah had access to the wildest dreams and spiciest realities of Black women from around the world. But so often, she noticed that something was holding them back from achieving full liberation and unfettered joy. So, she set out to apply sankofa--which means learning from the past to inform the future--to sexuality and pleasure, reclaiming African traditions in a quest to achieve true freedom.

In Seeking Sexual Freedom, Sekyiamah takes readers across the African continent, from Senegal to Tanzania and beyond, where she meets and trains with gurus, "witches", and aunties whose job it is to guide girls through puberty rites and later through "marital training." She discusses practices like beading and pulling, while highlighting the spiritual and gender-fluid nature of African traditional religions. With the "interruption" of colonialism, Sekyiamah explores why we have lost our way, how western patriarchal norms led to our warped ideals of beauty and shame, internalized racism, as well as to state and interpersonal violence. Sankofa, she explains, can help rid us of these obstacles that stand in the way of our sexual liberation. Using practical advice and prompts, Sekyiamah concludes this adventure by giving us the tools we need to establish a more joyful and free sexual practice of our own.

Part travelogue, part manifesto, Seeking Sexual Freedom is the powerful and bold call to pleasure women of all backgrounds need today.

During the course of the struggle of African people against European racism, brutality and domination, many innovative thinkers have risen from our ranks. The greatest and most courageous scholars have devoted their lives to the pursuit of an explanation for the virtually inherent animosity most white people appear to have toward people of color. Unlike her predecessors, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a brilliant, Washington D.C. psychiatrist has rejected conventional notions about the origin and perpetuation of racism. Dr. Welsing's theories, lectures and scientific papers have provoked controversy for over twenty years. Now the compilation of her work in [this book] is destined to change the course of history.

Squid Game meets Dear Justyce in an explosive young adult novel about a teenage girl on death row who competes on a reality show in hopes of winning her freedom.

Last Chance Live! is the most popular reality show in America—and eighteen-year-old death row inmate Eternity Price’s last chance to live. Getting cast on the show could win her clemency preventing her execution… if she can convince the viewing audience she deserves a second chance. The catch? If America doesn’t vote for her, she loses the chance to appeal her sentence, and she’ll be executed within a week of being eliminated from the show. And since Eternity’s been unpopular her whole life, she’s terrified America won’t pick her. But any chance of getting out of prison and back to her little brother Sincere, no matter how slim, is better than rotting away in her cell.

Eternity never expected to find her first real friends in a reality TV house full of people battling for survival after being convicted of capital crimes, but that’s exactly what happens. So when she gets the opportunity to sabotage them and secure her own victory, she has a choice to make: protect the friendships and acceptance she’s always longed for at the cost of her own life, or sacrifice her newfound community. Eternity must ultimately decide what forgiveness, family, and freedom mean to her, and how far she’ll go to win a game where the stakes are literally life or death.

From Mariame Kaba, New York Times-bestselling author of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, and social worker Jane Ball comes a powerful book showing the harm that prisons cause and exploring alternatives, gorgeously illustrated by Olly Costello.

Prisons, they do no good.
They do not help. 
They do not teach.

On a moonlit road, tucked away from prying eyes, a child sees a prison complex―cinder blocks, watch towers, barbed wire. Page by page, we come to see the prison as a child sees it. 

Prisons hurt people and leave them lonely, without loved ones to comfort them or lend a listening ear.

As dandelion stars float up in the air, this dreamscape becomes a hope-scape, where love transcends the prison walls. All the families and friends of the people in the prison march and protest in beautiful song, march together to a new way and a new dawn―in this case a cooperative housing and community center, next to a neighborhood greenhouse for restoration and healing. A new world, where connection and repair are fundamental, and even tangible, as people around a table quilt messages, “I hear you. I’m sorry for what I did. How can I make it better?”

In Prisons Must Fall, Mariame Kaba, a longtime activist, together with co-author Jane Ball, present solutions that do not involve incarceration, such as meeting people’s basic needs, restorative justice, and community support―seeds for a safe world. Illustrator Olly Costello provides textured images of a global majority community and a grey, monotone backdrop that is overtaken by joyful colors. A gentle but effective addition to all social justice bookshelves and libraries. Discussion questions included.

Perfect for:

* Parents, teachers, and librarians looking for books on the prison industrial complex and prison reform
* Kids who are interested in fairness and social justice
* Readers who love exceptional and sophisticated illustration

The classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience.
 
With a preface by Ishmael Reed • “As with Malcolm X, Cleaver’s book is a spiritual autobiography. An odyssey of a soul in search of itself, groping toward a personal humanism which will give meaning to life.”—The Progressive
 
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, “I’m perfectly aware that I’m in prison, that I’m a Negro, that I’ve been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation.” What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.

Our Stories: Black Families in Early Dallas enlarges upon two publications by the late Dr. Mamie McKnight’s organization, Black Dallas Remembered—First African American Families of Dallas (1987) and African American Families and Settlements of Dallas (1990). Our Stories is the history of Black citizens of Dallas going about their lives in freedom, as described by the late Eva Partee McMillan: “The ex-slaves purchased land, built homes, raised their children, erected their educational and religious facilities, educated their children, and profited from their labor.”

Our Stories brings together memoirs from many of Dallas’s earliest Black families, as handed down over the generations to their twentieth-century descendants. The period covered begins in the 1850s and goes through the 1930s. Included are detailed descriptions of more than thirty early Dallas communities formed by free African Americans, along with the histories of fifty-seven early Black families, and brief biographies of many of the early leaders of these Black communities.

The stories reveal hardships endured and struggles overcome, but the storytellers focus on the triumphs over adversity and the successes achieved against the odds. The histories include the founding of churches, schools, newspapers, hospitals, grocery stores, businesses, and other institutions established to nourish and enrich the lives of the earliest Black families in Dallas.

A prize-winning sociologist’s radical vision of the social power of erotic life. 

“Fearless, candid, and bold, Sex in Public is necessary reading for anyone interested in imagining a different kind of world, one that approaches eroticism and freedom as fundamentally linked.” —Jennifer C. Nash, author of Black Feminism Reimagined

Whether we are contending with shame, healing from trauma, or experimenting in the bedroom, there is a common tendency to cast anything sexual as a problem best solved in private. Fears of judgment fuel an air of oppression around something that should be liberating. According to feminist sociologist Angela Jones, we must reject this solitary vision of desire to claim the pleasure fundamental to our freedom.

Sex in Public offers a revolutionary new paradigm for understanding sexuality. Sex is never strictly personal, but relentlessly social, shaped by power relations, and possessing outsized power of its own. To make this case, Jones charts the inner and interrelated workings of our desires, behaviors, identities, relationships, and communities. 

Guiding readers through field-leading sociology, sexual science, and the voices of sexual rule-breakers worldwide, Jones pinpoints the repressive forces that distort eroticism’s power, but also reveals our means of breaking free. Championing a rebellious spirit that uplifts bodily autonomy, justice, and care, Sex in Public makes a tantalizing promise: better sex lives and empowerment await, if only we dare to know our sexualities fully, reimagining society as we do.

Since the discovery of African art by the Cubists, the primitive strength of its motifs has held a fascination for contemporary artists and designers and has exercised a considerable infl uence on the development of modern art. This book brings together an unusually varied selection of African designs which will find many uses in advertising and in the creation of book designs, bookplates, labels, and patterns for textiles and wallpaper; or may simply serve as inspiration for the creation of original designs. Rendered in stark black-and-white, they may be reproduced, enlarged, reduced or altered at will.
Symbolic and simple geometric motifs, repetitive designs and textural patterns, representations of human beings, animals and mythical figures, masks, abstract motifs, and artifacts and objects with figural components are reproduced from the work of the Ndebele, Ashanti, Zulu, Masai, Bushongo, Mangbetu, Bariba, Toma, Baule and many other tribes. There are designs from carved ivory pendants and bracelets, helmet masks, wooden combs, altar slabs and shields, and designs printed on cloth and painted on doors and walls. Each is identified by original use, and the source is listed for each.
Geoffrey Williams, himself a practicing designer, has reproduced most of these designs by means of linocut prints in order to capture the power of the originals. His sources have been artifacts in museums and private collections with a few designs gathered from the pages of important publications on the subject. A bibliography refers the reader not only to the sources of material used for this book, but to other major sources of information about African tribal art.

Christina N. Baker’s Contemporary Black Women Filmmakers and the Art of Resistance is the first book-length analysis of representations of Black femaleness in the feature films of Black women filmmakers. These filmmakers resist dominant ideologies about Black womanhood, deliberately and creatively reconstructing meanings of Blackness that draw from their personal experiences and create new symbolic meaning of Black femaleness within mainstream culture. Addressing social issues such as the exploitation of Black women in the entertainment industry, the impact of mass incarceration on Black women, political activism, and violence, these films also engage with personal issues as complex as love, motherhood, and sexual identity. Baker argues that their counter-hegemonic representations have the potential to transform the narratives surrounding Black femaleness. At the intersection of Black feminism and womanism, Baker develops a “womanist artistic standpoint” theory, drawing from the work of Alice Walker, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Analyzing the cultural texts of filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay, Tanya Hamilton, Kasi Lemmons, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Dee Rees—and including interviews she conducted with three of the filmmakers—Baker emphasizes the importance of applying an intersectional perspective that centers on the shared experiences of Black women and the role of film as a form of artistic expression and a tool of social resistance.

The politics and music of the sixties and early seventies have been the subject of scholarship for many years, but it is only very recently that attention has turned to the cultural production of African American poets. 

In "After Mecca," Cheryl Clarke explores the relationship between the Black Arts Movement and black women writers of the period. Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Alice Walker, and others chart the emergence of a new and distinct black poetry and its relationship to the black community's struggle for rights and liberation. Clarke also traces the contributions of these poets to the development of feminism and lesbian-feminism, and the legacy they left for others to build on. 

She argues that whether black women poets of the time were writing from within the movement or writing against it, virtually all were responding to it. Using the trope of "Mecca," she explores the ways in which these writers were turning away from white, western society to create a new literacy of blackness.
 

Provocatively written, this book is an important contribution to the fields of African American literary studies and feminist theory.

The Houston Chinatown’s dramatic transformation from a Chinese enclave decades ago to a continually expanding multiethnic boomtown today contrasts development stagnation in many other traditional American Chinatowns. This pioneer study delineates the evolution of Houston’s two Chinatowns, from the emergence and decline of Old Chinatown to the subsequent development and vibrant growth of New Chinatown – spanning nearly a century.

Zheng and Zou delve into the distinctive character of New Chinatown, underscoring its innovative progress that sets it apart from the nation’s oldest major Chinatowns, a quintessentially Houston story. They also probe the immigrant experience, political landscape, and socioeconomic dynamics that influenced the Chinatowns’ metamorphoses. Scanning the community’s collective response to the dire impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on New Chinatown, the chapters examine the latest development trends in the New Chinatown areas, shedding light on the extent to which they are upholding, or deviating from, traditional practices. Furthermore, the book explores the significance of these trends to the local community and beyond, alongside their wider implications.

Amidst the growth challenges encountered by numerous Chinatowns across America, this timely work offers insightful perspectives on a sustainable model for urban and community development, as demonstrated by the transformative journey of Houston’s New Chinatown.

Explores how Black women have continually used sound to convey stories and forge community across generations.

From Blues to Beyoncé amplifies Black women's ongoing public assertions of resistance, agency, and hope across different media from the nineteenth century to today. By examining recordings, music videos, autobiographical writings, and speeches, Alexis McGee explores how figures such as Ida B. Wells, Billie Holiday, Ruth Brown, Queen Latifah, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Janelle Monáe, and more mobilize sound to challenge antiBlack discourses and extend social justice pedagogies. Building on contemporary Black feminist interventions in sound studies and sonic rhetorics, From Blues to Beyoncé reveals how Black women's sonic acts transmit meaning and knowledge within, between, and across generations.

The Return of Black Nationalism and the Death of White Supremacy delves into the dynamic history and powerful future of Black Nationalism in the United States. From the dark days of slavery to today's fight for equality, this compelling book uncovers the relentless struggle of African Americans against systemic white supremacy, a legacy embedded in the very foundation of the country.

Professor Vincent Adejumo takes readers on a fascinating journey through time, unraveling the rich history of Black Nationalism and its role as a steadfast defense against white supremacy. He shines a light on the remarkable individuals and leaders who have shaped Black American identity from the 1700s to the present, bringing their stories to life with vivid detail and insightful analysis.

Discover a different America through Adejumo's eyes, where the concept of 'Separate but Equal' is reinterpreted and the essence of Blackness is celebrated. This book not only explores the past but also connects it to today's economic and political landscape, revealing the lasting influence of Black Nationalism.

Whether you're a history enthusiast or a curious reader, The Return of Black Nationalism and the Death of White Supremacy offers a fresh perspective on American history, uncovering the unsung heroes and unexpected villains who have shaped the nation's journey. This is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the profound impact of Black Nationalism on America's past, present, and future.

A compelling foreword by Dr. Adeyami Dossintroduces the book. Dozens of historical images complement this important story.

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state.

As this 25th anniversary edition—featuring a foreword by Tommy Shelbie and a new preface by the author—makes clear, the still-urgent The Racial Contract continues to inspire, provoke, and influence thinking about the intersection of the racist underpinnings of political philosophy.

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“I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin’s prose. It liberated me as a writer.”—Toni Morrison

This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, probing the shortcomings of the American protest novel and the harmful representations of Black identity in film and fiction

Originally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays “Autobiographical Notes,” “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” “Many Thousands Gone,” and “Carmen Jones: The Dark is Light Enough,” showcase Baldwin’s incisive voice as a social and literary critic.

“Autobiographical Notes” outlines Baldwin’s journey as a Black writer and his hesitant transition from fiction to nonfiction. In the following essays, Baldwin explores the Black experience through the lens of popular media, critiquing the ways in which Black characters—in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, and the 1950s film Carmen Jones—are reduced to digestible caricatures.

Everybody’s Protest Novel: Essays is the first of 3 special editions in the James Baldwin centennial anniversary series. Through this collection, Baldwin examines the façade of progress present in the novels of Black oppression. These essays showcase Baldwin’s profound ability to reveal the truth of the Black experience, exposing the failure of the protest novel, and the state of racial reckoning at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement.

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This celebration of Black resistance, from protests to art to sermons to joy, offers a blueprint for the fight for freedom and justice -- and ideas for how each of us can contribute

Many of us are facing unprecedented attacks on our democracy, our privacy, and our hard-won civil rights. If you're Black in the US, this is not new. As Colorlines editors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin show, Black Americans subvert and resist life-threatening forces as a matter of course. In these pages, leading organizers, artists, journalists, comedians, and filmmakers offer wisdom on how they fight White supremacy. It's a must-read for anyone new to resistance work, and for the next generation of leaders building a better future.

Featuring contributions from:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Tarana Burke
• Harry Belafonte
• Adrienne Maree brown
• Alicia Garza
• Patrisse Khan-Cullors
• Reverend Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
• Kiese Laymon
• Jamilah Lemieux
• Robin DG Kelley
• Damon Young
• Michael Arceneaux
• Hanif Abdurraqib
  
• Dr. Yaba Blay
  
• Diamond Stingily
  
• Amanda Seales
• Imani Perry
  
• Denene Millner
  
• Kierna Mayo
  
• John Jennings
  
• Dr. Joy Harden Bradford
  
• Tongo Eisen-Martin