"National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew,"...

"An inspiring memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl. 'She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.'—Toni Morrison. For Glory Edim, that 'friend of my mind' is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular...

Multiculturalism. It has been the subject of cover stories in Time and Newsweek, as well as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines around America. It has sparked heated jeremiads by George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa, and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fishand Catherine Stimpson on "Firing Line." It is arguably the most hotly debated topic in America today--and justly so. For whether one speaks of tensions between...

"Mr. Baker perceives the harlem Renaissance as a crucial moment in a movement, predating the 1920's, when Afro-Americans embraced the task of self-determination and in so doing gave forth a distinctive form of expression that still echoes in a broad spectrum of 20th-century Afro-American arts. . . . Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance may well become Afro-America's 'studying manual.'"-Tonya Bolden, New York Times Book Review

Introduction. 1. "Laffin fit ter kill:" Black Humor in the Fiction of William Wells Brown and Charles W. Chesnutt. 2. The Conjurer Recoils: Slavery in Richard Pryor and Chappelle's Show. 3. Conjuring the Mysteries of Slavery: Voodoo, Fetishism, and Stereotype in Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada. 4. "A Comedy of the Grotesque": Robert Colescott, Kara Walker and the Iconography of Slavery. 5. The Tragicomedy of Slavery in Suzan-Lori Parks' Early Plays....

"An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature. Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the rest of their lives--but not everyone regularly sees themselves on the pages of a book. In this timely anthology,...