"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: a stunning meditation on ritual and collectiveness that explores how older forms of inquiry-from song to prayer to ways of public gathering-might help us all survive violent times and address America's shared history"-- Smith begins in Sunflower, Alabama, where her grandfather returned after World War I with a hero's record but difficult prospects as a Black man. She consider the life of her father through the...

"From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby...

When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country's most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. In the previous decade, Jim Crow laws had legalized discrimination in the South, eroding social and economic gains for former slaves. Lynching was on the rise, and Black Americans faced new barriers to voting. Slavery had been abolished, but if...

"An exciting new voice makes the case for a colorblind approach to politics and culture, warning that the so-called 'anti-racist' movement is driving us-ironically-toward a new kind of racism. As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents-who lived through segregation. The...

This provocative new edition examines the mass media as economic and cultural institutions that shape our social identities, particularly regarding gender, race and class. A comprehensive introductory section outlines the book's integrated approach to media studies, which incorporates three distinct but related areas of investigation: the political economy of production, textual analysis and audience response.