Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Greer's book tells the story of black civil-rights-era entrepreneurs who cajoled American corporations into catering to black people-for better or for worse. Her scholarship helps readers reframe the protest-centric narrative of the civil rights movement by teasing out how black capitalists' products and public relations campaigns leveraged major corporations like Standard Oil and Coca-Cola to support racial justice. However, far beyond the purview of voting rights and desegregation, this history also illuminates the origins of the racialized marketing that companies have employed to profiteer off black communities for generations." * The Nation *"Represented not only provides an important intervention in Black entrepreneurial history but also offers insights into how Black entrepreneurship and image creation aided in the reimagining of African American citizenship during the postwar struggle for civil rights . . . Greer uses an array of sources, but none more effectively than the advertising and marketing images displayed throughout the book. She uses these visual representations of Blackness to show how African Americans employed these images in their quest to market themselves as American citizens. At the core of the story of the African American struggle for freedom has been the quest for citizenship . . . A part of what Greer does masterfully in Represented is to challenge scholars to reconsider the fronts on which those battles have been fought." * The Journal of African American History *"Brenna Wynn Greer reveals how corporations and professional image-makers gave us some of our earliest photographic visions of freedom, showing how they captured, in the process, our most iconic snapshots of the black freedom struggle. Black capitalism and black activism have long been part of a single history. Represented now gifts us that history-timely and transformative-in a single, important book." * N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida *"Represented presents a powerful, critical, and wholly original analysis of the relationships between race, capital, and citizenship. Through a sophisticated and subtle reading of history, and a close examination of prominent black media makers, Brenna Wynn Greer offers an interpretation that rightly positions black people as shapers of American economy and postwar public culture. The book is a sorely needed contribution to the literature on black capitalism, media culture, and civil rights activism." * Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond *"Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Represented is a groundbreaking, exemplary book that makes a field-defining intervention into the relationship between visual culture, capitalism, and citizenship." * Elspeth Brown, University of Toronto *"A wonderful and pioneering book that raises fresh questions about business, civil rights, and African American history. Complicating what it means to be a black capitalist, Brenna Wynn Greer charts a new path with her innovative framing of 'Civil Rights work.'" * Quincy Mills, Vassar College *

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Book SynopsisTapper shows how sickle cell anemia was used to promote the superiority of racial purity and to characterize the black body as contaminated.Trade Review"Tapper's assertion that sickle cell anemia has been used to determine racial purity and whiteness as well as 'black inferiority' is very convincing and well documented. Based on the book's format and sophistication, it is recommended for all levels, from general readers to professionals in the medical sciences." * Choice *"Recommended for all levels, from general readers to professionals in the medical sciences." * Library Journal *

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Book SynopsisThis volume presents an ethnographic study of Dominicans in New York City through their participation in small businesses. Krohn-Hansen demonstrates how Dominican enterprises work, how people find economic openings, and how Dominicans who own small commercial ventures have formed political associations to promote and defend their interests.Trade Review"Making New York Dominican is truly groundbreaking work on an important Latin American immigrant group. In Christian Krohn-Hansen's vivid, theoretically sophisticated ethnography, business is the central focus: how it works, how Dominican business owners break in and succeed, how they form political and cultural associations that sustain them and further their success, and how the impress of these businesses has made its mark on New York neighborhoods and political economy over three decades." * Roger Sanjek, author of The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART I 1. From Quisqueya to New York City 2. Origin Stories PART II 3. From Bodegas to Supermarkets 4. From Livery Cabs to Black Cars PART III 5. Dominicans and Hispanics 6. Up Against the Big Money 7. In Search of Dignity Conclusion Notes References Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisJames M. Glaser and Timothy J. Ryan vividly show how political strategies can counteract the impulse to think about racial issues in terms of winners and losers. Their problem-focused research shows how communities can build majority support for minority interests, even in the face of emotionally charged group conflicts.Trade Review"A substantive, intellectually engaging read. Changing Minds, If Not Hearts challenges the idea that intractable racial attitudes explain most political outcomes and offers compelling evidence that framing issues to defuse group conflict may successfully address some of the systemic obstacles that racial minorities face in democracies." * Melissa Nobles, Massachusetts Institute of Technology *Table of ContentsChapter 1. Burdens of Our Past Chapter 2. Ballot Architecture and the Building of Schools Chapter 3. Following Neighbors, If Not Leaders Chapter 4. Remorse, Retribution, and Restoration Chapter 5. A Panoply of Preferences Chapter 6. A Spotlight on Race Neutrality Chapter 7. Changing Minds, If Not Hearts Notes References Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe Strangers Book explores how a constellation of nineteenth-century African American writers radically reframed the terms of humanism by redefining what it meant to be a stranger.Trade Review"[An] important and fresh contribution to the study of African American literature, rereading the works of the canonical Douglass and turning our attention to lesser-known African American francophone poetry . . . Pratt offers [a] compelling and forceful theory and method that no doubt will shape the work of literary scholars and have the power to influence theorizations of African American history." * American Literature *"Pratt's scholarship is timely. As #BlackLivesMatter informs us, the struggle for racial justice in America continues . . . The Strangers Book is about African Americans writing about their experiences of an America that does not permit them to be seen as human. Revealing a complex network of relationships and texts, it offers an innovative framework to understand and read early African American literature. That these writers are communicating through varied kinds of storytelling points to one similarity across difference and time; that the figure of the 'strange negro' persists in the stories of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, or Freddie Gray, points to another." * MELUS *"A lot of academic monographs are credited with offering a critique, but The Strangers Book is the rare book that really and profoundly assesses the limits of what is thinkable. Like black lives, black texts matter. But it rings hollow to claim that both things matters without also disaffirming the existing structures of power-and the categories of person and text that power has established-that create the need to say such things in the first place. Like the Black Lives Matter movement, The Strangers Book offers a utopian affirmation of difference couched in a language of refusal, where the particular matters more than the universal toward which it supposedly should add." * Public Books *"The alternative humanism claimed by former slaves yields many corrective lessons for the present. Lloyd Pratt transforms our understanding of that archive by inserting the figure of the stranger into the interpretative frame. Energized by a host of newly unearthed discoveries, his innovative, absorbing book initiates a novel and urgent enquiry: the entanglement of race with various kinds of xenology. Ambitious and learned, this book will reshape the field of U.S. literary history." * Paul Gilroy, King's College London *"Lloyd Pratt's work addresses and rearticulates, in an exquisite way, current discussions of the status of the human in antebellum African American literature." * Branka Arsić, Columbia University *"The Strangers Book provides a bracing and unexpected perspective on literary history. As Pratt's chapters unfold, the reader begins to see how early African American letters can be read as offering new critical possibilities for Western literature as a whole." * Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction. Print and the Human Chapter 1. The Making of Self-Evidence Chapter 2. Frederick Douglass's Stranger-With-Thee Chapter 3. Les Apôtres de la Littérature and Les Cenelles Chapter 4. The Abundant Black Past Chapter 5. How to Read a Strangers Book Epilogue. Stranger Literature Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe Heart of the Mission is the first in-depth examination of the Latino arts renaissance in San Francisco's Mission District in the latter twentieth century. Using evocative oral histories and archival research, Cordova highlights the rise of a vibrant intellectual community grounded in avant-garde aesthetics and radical politics.Trade Review"Cary Cordova's The Heart of the Mission is a complex, necessary book . . . Cordova's impressive research, which includes extensive archival excavation, artist interviews, and urban fieldwork, reveals an important and previously unexplored history of local activism practiced through Latino poster art, which spread word of the struggles of insurgent movements such as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas; Salvadoran diasporic art; the cultural politics of Día de los Muertos; and the founding of galleries and community art centers." * Journal of American History *"A definitive history of Latina/o art, production and community formation in San Francisco's Mission District." * Social History *"Cordova's excellent book stands as a significant contribution to many fields, and scholars across disciplines will find tremendous value in it." * Western Historical Quarterly *"Cordova tells a deeply compelling story about social and culturaltransformation in the Mission District in the twentieth century. Her book is worth reading for anumber of reasons, not the least of which is that The Heart of the Mission fills important gaps inpopular narratives about the history of California, San Francisco, sixties radicalism, the lineage ofLatino creative culture in America, and even postmodernism . . . [T]he book is a powerful testimony to the historical influence ofSan Francisco's Latino artists and activists on the culture of the city. And, crucially, it contextualizesthe dramatic changes currently sweeping through the heart of the Mission and the fights that arebeing waged to stop them." * H-California *"This is a wonderful book that is felicitously written, passionately argued, and full of information that is otherwise difficult to find. Cary Cordova's study fills a major gap in the current literature on Latino arts movements in the United States, as well as in the cultural history of San Francisco and California." * Richard Cándida Smith, University of California, Berkeley *"Cary Cordova has unearthed some truly fascinating archival material. Challenging the dominance of a certain type of Chicano art and identity politics, she expands the chronology and geography of Latino Art in the United States to include 1950s tango and jazz and contemporary AIDS activism." * A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Blain illuminates an oft-ignored period of black nationalist and internationalist activism in the U.S.: the Great Depression, World War II, and early Cold War. Her engrossing study shows that much of this activism was led by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women. . . . Adding essential chapters to the story of this movement, Blain expands current understanding of the central roles played by female activists at home and overseas." * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *"In a remarkable act of historical recovery, Blain expertly traces the vital role women played in shaping black nationalist politics between the 1920s and 1960s. . . . Essential reading to anyone wanting to better understand the history of race, empire, and imperialism in the twentieth century. Perhaps most important though, Blain provides us with a timely reminder of the militancy and tenacity of the women who were at the heart of black nationalist politics. . . . These women created the ideological and practical tools for future generations of activists to take up the global struggle against white supremacy." * H-Diplo *"Set the World on Fire is history at its very best. Keisha Blain has given us an unobstructed window into the minds of black nationalist women. Sharp voices and gripping stories reveal a philosophical flexibility paired with an inflexible challenge to global white supremacy." * Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning *"Set the World on Fire shows us what is hidden in plain sight. More importantly, she lays bare the foundational elements of black nationalist thought and practice. In short, women were not simply helpmates to men, but the creators and constructors of the intellectual, ideological, and organizational underpinnings of the black nationalist project in the 20th century." * Public Books *"Keisha Blain has dug deeply into twentieth-century history to reveal the personal and political lives of African diaspora women determined to Set the World on Fire as they walked a fine line between leading and adhering to the black nationalist dictate of masculine leadership. Drawing upon a range of materials, including FBI files, personal letters, newspapers, and federal census records, Blain details every step of these women's organizing efforts and their pan-African visions." * Ula Taylor, author of The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam *"Set the World on Fire illuminates a dark though important area of history. Deftly written, it is also a signal contribution to African American studies and women's studies. It shines brightening light on a previously-and scandalously-neglected topic." * Gerald Horne, author of Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Women Pioneers in the Garvey Movement Chapter 2. The Struggle for Black Emigration Chapter 3. Organizing in the Jim Crow South Chapter 4. Dreaming of Liberia Chapter 5. Pan-Africanism and Anticolonial Politics Chapter 6. Breaks, Transitions, and Continuities Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Blatt has provided a service to intellectual historians. This well-documented and clearly written book achieves its objectives by squarely positioning racist assumptions at the heart of political science's origins in the modern academy." * The Journal of American History *"[N]ot only a historical work that traces the foundations of racialism within the discipline of political science but is also a compelling account about the disavowal and continued importance of race in politics...those trained in political science (undergraduates, graduates) and those teaching political thought would do well to stock Race and the Making of American Political Science on their bookshelves. " * Journal of African American History *"Jessica Blatt's groundbreaking book explores the leading thinkers who shaped the foundation of the political science discipline . . . [T]his book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the merger between science and politics. It makes a convincing argument that racialism and its various manifestations (White supremacy, colonialism/neocolonialism, imperialism,evolution, and racial psychometrics) have been instrumental to shaping political science." * History of Education Quarterly *"Jessica Blatt has delivered a masterful account of the illiberal fiber inherent in American political reality. That is, how a country committed to democratic equality and freedom has invested so much ink, blood, and money in ideas of racial difference to produce a conjoined history of unfreedoms and massive inequalities. She brings history to life on the page in her compelling telling of the ways that key intellectuals shaped the early field of political science through varied but sustained commitments to normalized white supremacy. Blatt has opened the way for a watershed reflective moment in her field-and beyond." * Duana Fullwiley, Stanford University *"Race and the Making of American Political Science is one of those rare books that makes an important scholarly contribution and a significant intervention in civic discourse. In examining carefully how racialist ideologies shaped the first half century of American political science, Blatt also provides a richly theorized and historically grounded account of what 'race' is as an ideology of essential human difference, how it has evolved, and how its premises continue to shape academic and popular discourses. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the history of the social sciences and anyone concerned with making sense of race ideology and how it works in our society." * Adolph Reed, Jr., University of Pennsylvania *"In an exhilarating story, which never flags in energy or excitement, Jessica Blatt shows how foundational racism and concepts of race were to American political science, not just at the beginning but in its heyday as a social science. A pioneering work exploding with insights and discoveries on every page, her book is also a cautionary tale for today, when academics and journalists increasingly turn to race as a category of political explanation, unwittingly repeating the maneuvers that Blatt so vividly documents and describes." * Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center *"Jessica Blatt has written a fine book. She is correct that race is a dimension of disciplinary history that has not been seriously explored. Everyone notices the founding generation's Teutonism, but none of the major historical studies have taken it seriously as a species of racialism or examined its lingering consequences." * Dorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University *"Race and the Making of American Political Science illuminates key elements in the past of American political science-the founding of the discipline around a core racialist scheme and the subsequent evolution of ideas about race within the discipline as practitioners adapted to the rise of U.S. power in the world." * Howard Brick, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. "The White Man's Mission": John W. Burgess and the Columbia School of Political Science Chapter 2. "All Things Lawful Are Not Expedient": The American Political Science Association Considers Jim Crow Chapter 3. Twentieth-Century Problems: Administering an American Empire Chapter 4. The Journal of Race Development: Evolution and Uplift Chapter 5. Laying Specters to Rest: Political Science Encounters the Boasian Critique of Racial Anthropology Chapter 6. Finding New Premises: Race Science, Philanthropy, and the Institutional Establishment of Political Science Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Colonial Complexions offers an important new angle on the processes through which racial categories became entrenched in American and Western thought and culture . . . [and] a badly needed and deeply insightful analysis of a level of race-making that falls between high scientific discourse and social life . . . Sharon Block reveals a too-often hidden and absolutely crucial current of racial thought and practice in early America." * Journal of Early American History *"Colonial Complexions is a crucial contribution to the history of race and a noteworthy model for digital age historical methodology." * Black Perspectives *"Part of Block's purpose in Colonial Complexions is to prompt historians to think more carefully about echoing without question the descriptions and classifications we find in our sources . . . .Colonial Complexions contributes mightily to the literature on the social construction of race by illuminating the very real effects of those constructions." * Reviews in American History *"In her deeply researched text, author Sharon Block traces the historical development of ideas surrounding racial characterizations and the body. Colonial Complexions uses thousands of runaway advertisements for captives and servants to argue for a more nuanced understanding of racial categories in eighteenth-century America...Colonial Complexions will likely prove intellectually generative. Block’s ambitious text provides a significant scholarly intervention and forces historians to think carefully about the need to historicize concepts of race, complexion, and skin color when examining early American history. " * Journal of African American History *""Colonial Complexions has done important work to hone our understanding of the role of colonial advertisements in western-Atlantic racial formations, and Block has assembled a valuable archive that remains ripe for future inquiry into the interlinked processes of human monetization and racialization during the period just before the founding of a republic still in their thrall." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *"[T]his is an admirable work of scholarship that provides thoughtful and thorough statistical analysis of a telling but previously neglected archive. The result is to buttress the recent scholarly understanding of the inchoate nature of racial ideology (and even bodily perception) in the third quarter of the eighteenth century in British North America. As much of the scholarly work toward redefining our understandings of race in this key period has been done by literary and theoretically oriented scholars, the support of Block's careful statistical analysis, and her compelling presentation of it, should prove invaluable to the ongoing debate on this always contentious issue."" * Early American Literature *"By employing digital methods to interrogate the process of race-making in the eighteenth-century, Colonial Complexions makes visible the cultural worldview underlying racial formations and pushes scholarship in exciting new directions." * Journal of Southern History *"In Colonial Complexions, historian Sharon Block offers a subtle and profound reading of the processes of race-making in colonial North America. Drawing on thousands of advertisements for the return of servant and enslaved laborers of African, European, and Native American descent, Block offers a careful and critical reading of how colonial slave and contract owners consolidated racial meaning on bodies through specific language, evaluation, and the naturalization of status over the eighteenth century. After reading this book, scholars will be compelled to deconstruct colonial terms of racial designation that have been uncritically reproduced and to change the way we think and write about race and racial meaning in the past and the effects of these terms in our present." * Marisa Fuentes, Rutgers University *"A powerful history of complexion and how it mobilized across race, labor, and hierarchy in colonial slavery. Colonial Complexions asks us to think carefully about the processes of race-making. Sharon Block's engagement with the history of the body and the meanings ascribed to color represents foundational work in the history of racial formation and power in early America." * Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University *"Colonial Complexions is remarkable. Through an astonishing amount of research and the analysis of thousands of advertisements for missing persons in colonial newspapers, Sharon Block determines when and how 'race' acquired its meaning and basic equation with slavery. In this innovative way, she argues that race and slavery came to be intertwined through seemingly innocuous descriptions." * Elizabeth Reis, Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Complicating Humors and Rethinking Complexion Chapter 2. Shaping Bodies in Print: Labor and Health Chapter 3. Coloring Bodies: Naturalized Incompatibilities Chapter 4. Categorizing Bodies: Race, Place, and the Pursuit of Freedom Chapter 5. Written by and on the Body: Racialization of Affects and Effects Epilogue Appendices 1. Advertisements for Runaways: Sources and Methodology 2. Graphic Overview of Advertisements for Runaways 3. Newspapers with Advertisements for Runaways (1750-75) Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisA constant feature of Jewish culture in the medieval Mediterranean was the dedication of panegyric texts in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and other languages to men of several ranks: scholars, communal leaders, courtiers, merchants, patrons, and poets. Although the imagery of nature and eroticism in the preludes to these poems is often studied, the substance of what follows is generally neglected, as it is perceived to be repetitive, obsequious, and less aesthetically interesting than other types of poetry from the period. In Dominion Built of Praise, Jonathan Decter demurs. As is the case with visual portraits, panegyrics operate according to a code of cultural norms that tell us at least as much about the society that produced them as the individuals they portray. Looking at the phenomenon of panegyric in Mediterranean Jewish culture from several overlapping perspectives—social, historical, ethical, poetic, political, and theological—he finds that they offer representatTrade Review"Dominion Built of Praise represents an original and comprehensive diachronic study of medieval Hebrew poetry of praise, how and why it was deployed, and what religious and literary intellectuals thought about it. Readers of medieval Hebrew literature and comparatists are indebted to Decter for inviting us to return to the panegyric as an artistically and conceptually complex cultural artifact and for opening important and fascinating new lines of inquiry into its discourse." * Speculum *"Decter has produced a valuable book which deepens our understanding of the phenomenon of praise poetry in the Jewish Mediterranean in every respect, in relation to power and authority within Jewish society and beyond. It is an excellently written book in which formal data and personal opinions are fully justified by original sources and relevant scholarly studies. It is a must for anyone who has questions about the meaning of the art of praise poetry in medieval times." * English Historical Review *"Decter’s book is the rigorous product of a fruitful and well-planned study of the genre of panegyrics. He offers a journey through the genre, focusing on key aspects, authors, and works to understand the differences across time and space. His superb knowledge of the medieval Islamic world allows the analysis to be conducted against the background of the Arabo-Islamic intellectual trends that inform and shed light on the development of the Hebrew cultural production. In addition, Decter manages to enrich the discussion by providing well-selected examples. There is no doubt that Dominion Built of Praise successfully fills the conspicuous gap in our knowledge of the panegyric genre within the history of Hebrew literature." * Religion & Literature *"Dominion Built of Praise is clear and surefooted, its historical contextualization deft, and its revisionism refreshing and never heavy-handed. Jonathan Decter has a profound and intimate knowledge of medieval Hebrew poems and other texts, many of them unpublished and all of them in some ways overlooked. Medieval Hebrew praise poetry has never been taken so seriously, and Decter demonstrates why it should be." * Marina Rustow, Princeton University *"Dominion Built of Praise represents a very important diachronic study of the relatively neglected genre of medieval Hebrew praise poetry. Customarily treated or dismissed as highly styled in form and thoroughly conventional in content, Hebrew panegyric in Jonathan Decter's highly skilled hands speaks directly and indirectly, through language and representation, to communal leadership, authority, and legitimacy. Thanks to Decter's wide-ranging perspective, Dominion Built of Praise extends beyond al-Andalus to mapping and analyzing Hebrew literary creativity in Christian Europe, Italy, and other Mediterranean lands." * Ross Brann, Cornell University *"Panegyric is both central to the medieval Jewish literary tradition and aesthetically challenging. Jonathan Decter explores how it operated within a politically dominion-less Jewish community and how it was used to negotiate between the Jewish community or its members and the ruling Muslim or Christian power. Drawing on original textual research in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and Castilian, he has produced a study that contributes to all of those fields." * Suzanne Stetkevych, Georgetown University *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Performance Matters: Between Public Acclamation and Epistolary Exchange Chapter 2. Poetic Gifts: Maussian Exchange and the Working of Medieval Jewish Culture Chapter 3. "Humble Like the Humble One": The Language of Jewish Political Legitimacy Chapter 4. "Sefarad Boasts over Shinar": Mediterranean Regionalism in Jewish Panegyric Chapter 5. "A Word Aptly Spoken": The Ethics of Praise Chapter 6. "A Cedar Whose Stature in the Garden of Wisdom . . . ": Hyperbole, the Imaginary, and the Art of Magnification Chapter 7. In Praise of God, in Praise of Man: Issues in Political Theology Chapter 8. "May His Book Be Burnt Even Though It Contains Your Praise!": Jewish Panegyric in the Christian Mediterranean Chapter 9. The Other "Great Eagle": Interreligious Panegyrics and the Limits of Interpretation Afterword Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn the years between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War, as legal and cultural understandings of citizenship became more racially restrictive, black writers articulated an expansive, practice-based theory of citizenship. Grounded in political participation, mutual aid, critique and revolution, and the myriad daily interactions between people living in the same spaces, citizenship, they argued, is not defined by who one is but, rather, by what one does. In The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires examines the parallel development of early black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship, beginning in 1787, with the framing of the federal Constitution and the founding of the Free African Society by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and ending in 1861, with the onset of the Civil War. Between these two points he recovers understudied figures such as William J. Wilson, whose 1859 Afric-American Picture Gallery appeared in seven installments iTrade Review"n The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires analyzes how early Black newspapers, pamphlets, and the published proceedings of the Black conventions gave birth to new theories and practices of citizenship...Spires’s recovery of independent Black theories of citizenship is intellectually sophisticated and highly original. Spires offers a “reparative reading” of African American ideas about citizenship that go beyond the country’s founding ideals of civic republicanism." * The New York Review of Books *""[E]ngaging, powerful, and absolutely necessary . . . In The Practice of Citizenship, Spires theorizes alongside some of the most brilliant and challenging writers of the nineteenth century. But with an ease made all the more impressive because of its seeming effortlessness, Spires has written a detailed and elegant book that offers his readers a well cleared pathway into the world of black theorizing in the nineteenth century, and thus provided us with an opportunity to learn from activist-writers who developed and enacted practices of citizenship that engaged with but refused to be bound by the rules and regulations of a white supremacist state. And as an interpreter of and guide through these practices, Spires models for us black theorizing in the twenty-first century, an approach that is at once scholarly method and ethical imperative. An inspired and inspiring work filled with theories and practices that are as necessary now as they were then, The Practice of Citizenship is, in short, essential reading." * Reviews in American History *"[A]n intelligent and well-researched analysis of how writers of African descent in the New World understood and demonstrated citizenship from the late eighteenth century until the dawn of the Civil War. The Practice of Citizenship offers a robust foundation on which future generations of teachers, students, and researchers could learn more about the creativity and resolve of the African diaspora in its long quest for a citizenship they deserve rightfully and unquestionably to call their own." * Early American Literature *"The Practice of Citizenship is a rare and important book . . . In this beautifully written and theoretically sophisticated study, the author chronicles how Black people conceived and practiced citizenship in spaces including-and perhaps especially-beyond the nation-state form . . . It is as much a theory of contested spaces as it is a philosophy of community." * Modern Philology *"Derrick Spires’ The Practice of Citizenship is a beautifully written and brilliantly evocative work that centres print culture in the early United States as a site for the theorization and practice of citizenship for Black people…Reflecting on this book in the modern era, it is evident that there are historical carryovers as regards the theory and practice of Black citizenship which mark Spires’ work as urgent and necessary in the current moment. It would do well to recall that citizenship ideals and practices advocated by Black thinkers in the early United States, such as collective power, networks and neighborhoods, and critical citizenship, still remain vital in the ongoing twenty-first-century movement for recognition of Black citizenship in the United States, both in theory and in practice." * American Nineteenth Century History *"Derrick Spires’s comprehensive, wide-ranging analysis of citizenship in early African American print culture is a magnificent study in the field. It will stand among the milestone studies of early African American literature and print culture among this generation of scholars. His book positions African American ideas of citizenship between the American Revolution and Civil War as nuanced, protean, and evolving. He proposes the theory—brilliant, generative, carefully elaborated, and conversation-shifting—that African Americans claimed and constructed the role of citizenship as one entwined in action, in the process of doing everyday civil, political, familial, and commercial work in their communities." * American Periodicals *"Offering a richly immersive experience, The Practice of Citizenship displaces well-known representative figures, foregrounds a diverse community of letters, and significantly increases our understanding of African American discourses of citizenship." * Jeannine DeLombard, University of California, Santa Barbara *"Derrick R. Spires orchestrates insightful readings of both the most important and underutilized touchstones in early Black print studies like a master conductor. By having an array of early Black authors, events, and exchanges in play together and by amplifying how early Black writers and communities created, enlivened, and sustained collective advocacy, Spires's work is poised to significantly expand the canon of nineteenth-century texts scholars write about and teach. The Practice of Citizenship is a considerable achievement." * P. Gabrielle Foreman, University of Delaware *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Black Theorizing: Reimagining a "Beautiful but Baneful Object" Chapter 1. Neighborly Citizenship in Absalom Jones and Richard Allen's A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late and Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793 Chapter 2. Circulating Citizenship in the Black State Conventions of the 1840s Chapter 3. Economic Citizenship in Ethiop and Communipaw's New York Chapter 4. Critical Citizenship in the Anglo-African Magazine, 1859-1860 Chapter 5. Pedagogies of Revolutionary Citizenship Conclusion. "To Praise Our Bridges" Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn 1948, Moss Kendrix, a former New Deal public relations officer, founded a highly successful, Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm, the flagship client of which was the Coca-Cola Company. As the first black pitchman for Coca-Cola, Kendrix found his way into the rarefied world of white corporate America. His personal phone book also included the names of countless black celebrities, such as bandleader Duke Ellington, singer-actress Pearl Bailey, and boxer Joe Louis, with whom he had built relationships in the course of developing marketing campaigns for his numerous federal and corporate clients. Kendrix, along with Ebony publisher John H. Johnson and Life photographer Gordon Parks, recognized that, in the image-saturated world of postwar America, media in all its forms held greater significance for defining American citizenship than ever before. For these imagemakers, the visual representation of African Americans as good citizens was good business.In <Trade Review"Greer's book tells the story of black civil-rights-era entrepreneurs who cajoled American corporations into catering to black people-for better or for worse. Her scholarship helps readers reframe the protest-centric narrative of the civil rights movement by teasing out how black capitalists' products and public relations campaigns leveraged major corporations like Standard Oil and Coca-Cola to support racial justice. However, far beyond the purview of voting rights and desegregation, this history also illuminates the origins of the racialized marketing that companies have employed to profiteer off black communities for generations." * The Nation *"Represented not only provides an important intervention in Black entrepreneurial history but also offers insights into how Black entrepreneurship and image creation aided in the reimagining of African American citizenship during the postwar struggle for civil rights . . . Greer uses an array of sources, but none more effectively than the advertising and marketing images displayed throughout the book. She uses these visual representations of Blackness to show how African Americans employed these images in their quest to market themselves as American citizens. At the core of the story of the African American struggle for freedom has been the quest for citizenship . . . A part of what Greer does masterfully in Represented is to challenge scholars to reconsider the fronts on which those battles have been fought." * The Journal of African American History *"Brenna Wynn Greer reveals how corporations and professional image-makers gave us some of our earliest photographic visions of freedom, showing how they captured, in the process, our most iconic snapshots of the black freedom struggle. Black capitalism and black activism have long been part of a single history. Represented now gifts us that history-timely and transformative-in a single, important book." * N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida *"Represented presents a powerful, critical, and wholly original analysis of the relationships between race, capital, and citizenship. Through a sophisticated and subtle reading of history, and a close examination of prominent black media makers, Brenna Wynn Greer offers an interpretation that rightly positions black people as shapers of American economy and postwar public culture. The book is a sorely needed contribution to the literature on black capitalism, media culture, and civil rights activism." * Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond *"Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Represented is a groundbreaking, exemplary book that makes a field-defining intervention into the relationship between visual culture, capitalism, and citizenship." * Elspeth Brown, University of Toronto *"A wonderful and pioneering book that raises fresh questions about business, civil rights, and African American history. Complicating what it means to be a black capitalist, Brenna Wynn Greer charts a new path with her innovative framing of 'Civil Rights work.'" * Quincy Mills, Vassar College *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brown’s ingenious escape from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, by mailing himself in a wooden postal crate to abolitionists in Philadelphia, was unique and well documented. But that is not the story that most interests the author of this elegant cultural history. Cutter focuses on how Brown turned his experience in slavery into performance art on various tracks in many different locales" * Pennsylvania Heritage *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Abbreviations for Archives Consulted Introduction. The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown, the Man Who Mailed Himself to Freedom Chapter 1. Slavery and Freedom in US Visual Culture: The Performative Personae of William Wells Brown, William and Ellen Craft, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth Chapter 2. Becoming Box Brown, 1815–1857 Chapter 3. Performing Fugitivity: Henry Box Brown on the Nineteenth-Century British Stage, 1857 Chapter 4. Performing New Panoramas, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, and Second Sight, England, 1857–1875 Chapter 5. Canada, the United States, and Beyond: Performing Slavery and Freedom, 1875–1897 Chapter 6. The Absent Presence: Henry Box Brown in Contemporary Museums, Memorials, and Visual Art Chapter 7. Playing in the Archives: Box Brown in Contemporary Children’s Literature and Visual Poetry Coda. The Resilience of Box Brown and the Afterlives of Slavery Appendix. Selected Contemporary Creative Works About Henry Box Brown Notes Index

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Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/MemoirThis Random House Reader’s Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner!“Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America.”—San Francisco ChronicleIn 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’s wonderfully engaging famil

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Book SynopsisEn esta asombrosa historia real, la galardonada periodista Sonia Nazario relata la inolvidable odisea de un niño hondureño que enfrenta penurias y peligros para reunirse con su madre en los Estados Unidos.Cuando Enrique tiene cinco años, su madre, Lourdes, se marcha de Honduras para trabajar en los Estados Unidos. Esto le permite enviarle dinero a Enrique para que pueda comer mejor y asistir a la escuela más allá del tercer grado. Lourdes le promete a su hijo que regresará pronto, pero en los Estados Unidos las cosas no son fáciles. Transcurren once años. A Enrique lo desespera pensar que no volverá a ver a su madre, y se lanza solo en su busca desde Tegucigalpa con poco más que un pedazo de papel donde ha escrito el número telefónico de su madre en Carolina del Norte. Sin dinero, hará una travesía peligrosa e ilegal a lo largo de México de la única forma que puede: encaramado en los costados y en los techos de los trenes de carga. Con recia determinación y profundo anhelo, Enrique atraviesa mundos hostiles y desconocidos eludiendo pandilleros que controlan los techos de los trenes, bandidos despiadados y policías corruptos que sólo quieren robarle lo que tiene y deportarlo. Enrique avanza a fuerza de ingenio, coraje, y esperanza?y también gracias a la bondad de los desconocidos. Es una travesía épica que hacen miles de niños inmigrantes todos los años para encontrarse con sus madres en los Estados Unidos. Basado en la serie publicada por el periódico Los Angeles Times que ganó dos premios Pulitzer?uno por el reportaje, el otro por la fotografía?La Travesia de Enrique es una historia para todos los tiempos sobre familias desgarradas por la separación, sobre el anhelo de volver a estar juntos y sobre un niño que arriesgará su vida para reencontrarse con la madre que ama.

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Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Maya Angelou shares her path to living well and with meaning in this absorbing book of personal essays.   Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight. Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son. Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a &ldquo

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Book SynopsisFrom the author of Fresh Off the Boat, now a hit ABC sitcom, comes a hilarious and fiercely original story of culture, family, love, and red-cooked pork Eddie Huang was finally happy. Sort of. He’d written a bestselling book and was the star of a TV show that took him to far-flung places around the globe. His New York City restaurant was humming, his OKCupid hand was strong, and he’d even hung fresh Ralph Lauren curtains to create the illusion of a bedroom in the tiny apartment he shared with his younger brother Evan, who ran their restaurant business. Then he fell in love—and everything fell apart. The business was creating tension within the family; his life as a media star took him away from his first passion—food; and the woman he loved—an All-American white girl—made him wonder: How Chinese am I? The only way to find out, he decided, was to reverse his parents’ migration and head back to the mot

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Book SynopsisFrom the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hamilton: The Revolution, the stunning story of five American radicals fighting for their ideals as the country goes mad around them “Inspiring and entertaining.”—David Brooks, The New York Times “It’s not difficult to see why [Lin-Manuel] Miranda would have been attracted to [Jeremy] McCarter as a writing partner.”—The Wall Street Journal “One of the exciting new nonfiction books this summer.”—Time Where do we find our ideals? What does it mean to live for them—and to risk dying for them? For Americans during World War I, these weren’t abstract questions. Young Radicals tells the story of five activists, intellectuals and troublemakers who agitated for freedom and equality in the hopeful years before the war, then fought to de

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Book SynopsisTrade Review""Although scholars and lay persons alike most often think of Washington as an educator, this impressive text reveals that his business ideas and practices have had a much greater and longer impact on Americans, especially African Americans.""--Kenneth Hamilton, Southern Methodist University

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Delves into the historical convergence of peoples and cultural traditions that both enrich and problematize notions of national belonging, identity, culture, and citizenship.”—Antonio D. Tillis, editor of Critical Perspectives on Afro-Latin American Literature“With rich detail and theoretical complexity, Watson reinterprets Panamanian literature, dismantling longstanding nationalist interpretations and linking the country to the Black Atlantic and beyond. An engaging and important contribution to our understanding of Afro-Latin America.”—Peter Szok, author of Wolf Tracks: Popular Art and Re-Africanization in Twentieth-Century Panama“Illuminates the deeper discourse of African-descendant identities that runs through Panama and other Central American countries.”—Dawn Duke, author of Literary Passion, Ideological Commitment: Toward a Legacy of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian Women Writers

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Book SynopsisEric Walrond is one of the great underexamined figures of the Harlem Renaissance and the Caribbean diaspora. In Search of Asylum compiles Walrond's European journalism and later fiction. Louis Parascandola and Carl Wade have assembled a collection that at last fills in the biographical gaps in Walrond's life.Trade ReviewA substantial step forward for black diaspora and black transnational literary studies."" - Gary Edward Holcomb, author of Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha ""Fills a significant void in our understanding of the life and literary career of Eric Walrond. By collecting, for the first time, the writings Walrond produced following his departure from the U.S. in 1928, Parascandola and Wade have done scholars a rich service."" - Heather Hathaway, author of Caribbean Waves

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Book SynopsisThe chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism - a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, arguing that Reconstruction was, quite simply, a disaster, and that the civil rights movement triumphed despite it, not because of it.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“The detail of the discussion, the reliance on con­siderable primary evidence, and the overall contribution of the understand­ing of the develop­ment of southern education make this a valuable addition to the historical literature on the South, Highly recommended.” - Choice“The first comprehensive picture of the evolution of the programme from its origins at Tuskegee Institute in the 1910s until its termi­nation in 1932, Hoffschwelle assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the programme and its larger significance for the status of Af­rican Americans and southern race relations in the early twentieth century.” - American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisWhat defines a city’s public space? Who designates such areas, who determines their uses, and who gets to use them? Robert Cassanello uses nineteenth-century Jacksonville as both backdrop and springboard to explore social transformation in Florida and the South. This is the first book to focus on the emergence of African American public life in Jacksonville between Reconstruction and the 1920s.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDeftly unravels the complex historical interrelationships of race, color, class, economics, and environment in the Colonial Bahamas. An invaluable study for scholars who conduct comparative research on the British Caribbean."" - Rosalyn Howard, author of Black Seminoles in the Bahamas ""Saunders is to be commended for a scholarly study that prominently features the non-white majority in the Bahamas—a group which usually has been overlooked."" - Whittington B. Johnson, author of Post-Emancipation Race Relations in The Bahamas

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Book SynopsisTells a sweeping story of black internationalism across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Ocean worlds, told through the life and work of twentieth-century environmental activist Pauulu Kamarakafego. Challenging US-centered views of Black Power, Quito Swan offers a radically broader perspective.Trade ReviewA powerful, thoroughly researched, diasporic history of Black liberation politics during most of the 20th Century. . . . A remarkable study in political evolution and tenacity." - Choice"Makes crucial contributions to a set of inter-connecting literatures that probe the breadth and depth of black internationalism. . . . Leaves us pondering how deeply this material--and technical--history might shift our understandings of the routes of black internationalism and the registers of black power." - Journal of Social History

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Book SynopsisUsing the city of Salvador as a case study, Kwame Dixon tracks the emergence of black civil society groups and their political projects: claiming new citizenship rights, testing new anti-discrimination and affirmative action measures, reclaiming rural and urban land, and increasing political representation.Trade Review“Powerfully illustrates that Bahia has a vibrant black political history worthy of documentation, re-centering the scholarship on race and politics to the northeast where the black population is the majority.” —Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil“English-language work has rarely paid such attention to discourses in Afro-Brazilian communities on civil society inclusion and the process of democratization. This book is a significant contribution to understanding that movement for change and social justice.” —Clarence Lusane, author of The Black History of the White House

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Book SynopsisExamines the historic Black community of Timbuctoo, New Jersey, which was founded in 1826 by formerly enslaved migrants from Maryland. In collaboration with descendants and community members, Christopher Barton explores the intersectionality of life at Timbuctoo and the ways Black residents resisted the marginalizing structures of race and class.

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Book SynopsisAnalysing slave narratives, emigration polemics, a murder trial, and black-authored fiction, Andrea Stone highlights the central role physical and mental health and well-being played in antebellum black literary constructions of selfhood.Trade Review“A valuable resource. . . . Stone gives space to both fugitive and free black writers, canonical and obscure, essay and narrative, in an effort to revisit the terms of the canon and the boundaries of the black literary as it is understood for the Antebellum period”—American Literature“Does an excellent job at examining how black writers and orators—as well as white legal scholars and slaveholders—attempted to define black selfhood. . . . Everyone should read this book when trying to understand how today’s society has come to view black bodies and black well-being, especially in light of the Tuskegee experiment; Henrietta Lacks; and other immoral, illegal, and extralegal uses of black bodies for the benefit of white people.”—The Journal of African American History“Presents a wealth of literature—from pamphlets to ‘scientific’ findings to novels and short stories, all of which provides insight into antebellum sentiments regarding black selfhood.”—The Griot""An innovative interpretation of antebellum black literature as well as a timely contribution to the growing body of scholarship on health and the black body in slavery and freedom.""—Erica L. Ball, author of To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class""Engages productively with discourses of identity and subjectivity, the human and post-human, nationalism and citizenship, and law and medicine in a 'transcolonial' framework that includes the United States, the Caribbean, and Canada.""—Gwen Bergner, author of Taboo Subjects: Race, Sex, and Psychoanalysis

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Book SynopsisThe first book to examine dance criticism in the United States across 100 years, from the late 1920s to the early twenty-first century, Shaping Dance Canons argues that critics in the popular press have influenced how dance has been defined and valued, as well as which artists and dance forms have been taken most seriously.

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