Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Many sports history books in which authors analyze race focus on professional team sports. The history of professional team sports does not represent the full scope of the sporting experience, particularly for African Americans, and particularly during segregation. . . . In I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880 1915, Louis Moore writes about African American male boxers who not only fought but earned a living in the decades before and after the turn of the century." --Journal of African American History "Immensely readable. . . . I Fight for a Living is essential reading for anyone interested in 'the shadow of the black fist' of racism that loomed over the ring well into the twentieth century, and the African-American fight for equal footing amidst the inception of modern boxing."--Slugfestboston "I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood 1880-1915 is a fantastic and necessary contribution to the critical sociology of the race and sports paradigm, advancing conversations on boxing, race, masculinities, labor, and sports cultures. . . . By contextualizing fighting as both labor and a tool to challenge dominant ideologies, Moore broadens scholarly understandings in the sociology of sport and Black studies about the ways in which Black boxers asserted their agency by using sports as a medium to evade a racist job market and their success in the ring to disrupt the myth of Black inferiority." --International Review for Sociology of SportTable of ContentsCoverTitleCopyrightContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Bring Home the Bacon: The Black Proletariat and the Prizefighter2. Race Man or Race Menace? Pugilists, Patriarchy, and Pathology3. Black Men and the Business of Boxing4. Colored Championship and Color Lines5. Sambos, Savages, and the Shakiness of Whiteness6. Following the Color Line: Progressive Reform and the Fear of the Black FighterEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisVietnamese refugees fleeing the fall of South Vietnam faced a paradox. The same guilt-ridden America that only reluctantly accepted them expected, and rewarded, expressions of gratitude for their rescue. Meanwhile, their status as refugeesas opposed to willing immigrantsprofoundly influenced their cultural identity. Phuong Tran Nguyen examines the phenomenon of refugee nationalism among Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. Here, the residents of Little Saigon keep alive nostalgia for the old regime and, by extension, their claim to a lost statehood. Their refugee nationalism is less a refusal to assimilate than a mode of becoming, in essence, a distinct group of refugee Americans. Nguyen examines the factors that encouraged them to adopt this identity. His analysis also moves beyond the familiar rescue narrative to chart the intimate yet contentious relationship these Vietnamese Americans have with their adopted homeland. Nguyen sets their plight within the context of the Cold Trade Review"Nguyen offers a bold yet nuanced analysis of Vietnamese refugee experiences in the US. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"In Becoming Refugee American Phuong Tran Nguyen offers a timely and critical analysis of the history of Vietnamese refugees in the United States." --H-Asia "Becoming Refugee American is an ideal work to understand both the particular experiences of Vietnamese peoples in the United States and the broader implication of refugeeism." --The Journal of American History "Effectively illustrates the multifaceted challenges confronted by Vietnamese refugees who become part of the politics of rescue." --Western Historical Quarterly"Overall, Becoming Refugee American is an excellent and welcome addition to the growing scholarship on the Vietnamese American experience. The historical research and methodology devoted to writing this text give it a nuanced perspective." --American Historical Review"The book was lucidly written and meticulously documented. For this postwar-born Vietnamese American reviewer, the sensitive portrayal of rescue politics rang true and inspired sympathy for an older generation whose Refugee Americanness reflected grief and need as much as culture or ideology." --International Migration Review"Nguyen develops the concept of refugee nationalism to account for the complex affective lives of diasporic Vietnamese, whose loyalty to their lost nation, the Republic of Vietnam, is entangled in, and yet is also distinct from, their attachment to and gratitude for the US. . . . Becoming Refugee American is a book that shows the necessity of historicizing a fuller range of emotions." --Pacific Affairs"This is the history that Vietnamese Americans and those who study them have been waiting for, a terrific account of how Vietnamese refugees came to the United States and founded their own Little Saigon. Phuong Nguyen's clarifying, enjoyable account provides a persuasive framework of 'refugee nationalism' for understanding how these newcomers turned themselves into Americans."--Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War “The refugee world of Little Saigon now has its historian. Phuong Tran Nguyen’s brave and highly original book tells the intriguing story of how tens of thousands of Vietnamese became American; and anyone interested in the domestic legacy of America’s war in Indochina or its recent wars and military engagements in the Middle East should be listening.”--Lon Kurashige, author of Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA Choice Outstanding Title, 2018 "This well-written, thought-provoking, and comprehensively researched work is an important contribution to the growing area of emotions in society. . . . Essential."--Choice “Shame: A Brief History takes the reader on a breathtaking journey examining shame and shaming practices around the globe and through the ages. Stearns deftly delineates continuities and discontinuities across time and cultures, integrating key perspectives from psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics and more. This masterful work is delightfully written and thought provoking, exploring the uses of shame across multiple domains—education, childrearing, penology, international politics, to name a few. For better or worse, shame is with us—past, present, and future."--June P. Tangney, coeditor of Shame in the Therapy Hour"Shame: A Brief History knits together dispersed analyses of emotion of shame in individual cultures. . . .Stearns's long-term history of shame crosses the boundaries of classical, medieval, early modern and modern periodization so common in the history of emotions." --Social History"The central argument of Shame is a brilliant and incisive piece of cultural criticism, on par with some of Stearns's best work." --American Historical Review“Stearns is a leading authority in the field of American emotions. The depth and breadth of his knowledge is unrivaled. This is a wonderful book, a careful, in-depth study of one of the most important emotions of the current period.”--Joanna Bourke, author of The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The essays offer insight into how the end of de jure segregation shifted the significance of 'cultural authenticity' in a way that values nonwhite racial and ethnic identities as forms of property, and they demonstrate that the black-white boundary has been destabilized (although not destroyed) through continued multi-racial and multi-ethnic identification." --MELUS“Excellently introduced by Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young, the ten essays collected in this volume offer a wealth of information, from a working bibliography of neo-passing narratives to interpretive overviews of passing, old and new. The essays suggest that despite all historical, legal, and attitudinal changes in the course of the twentieth century, race remains a central obsession in the United States.”--Werner Sollors, author of The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s"Highly recommended." --Choice

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Anyone interested in college football, the history of intercollegiate athletics, and the attempts at governance, will find this book an important addition to their library and their knowledge.”--Sport Literature"Winton U. Solberg's Creating the Big Ten is a superb work on a significant topic in American social and institutional history." --The Journal of American History"A great resource for scholars and fans wanting an in-depth look at how the conference came together, and almost came apart, and the many different paths it might have taken along the way." --Journal of Sport History"Solberg has written a very useful and timely history. The commercialism of modern big-time intercollegiate sports was clearly a long time coming, as the author of Creating the Big Ten ruefully makes clear." --Middle West Review

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA Choice Outstanding Title, 2018 Music in American Culture Award, American Musicological Society, 2019 "Unpacks issues of power and cultural authenticity in the white-controlled jubilee industry and within blackface minstrelsy performances, including Uncle Tom and plantation shows . . . Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry will be crucial to anyone studying American music, especially those focused on the post-Civil War period through 1900, and of course anyone who studies African American music history."--Blackgrooves.org "[A] one-of-a-kind title . . . Many volumes address spirituals themselves, but few detail the actual exponents of this important African American tradition in such a refreshingly disarming way."--Library Journal"Graham proves an industry was built on and inspired by the specific cultural context and contributions of Black people. . . . Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry is compulsory reading for all who wish to expand their knowledge on Black contributions to music, art, and entertainment." --Transposition"A detailed, cogent, and fascinating history of the popularization of Negro spirituals [that is] thoroughly documented and covers a truly vast range of information. One of the especially distinctive features of Graham's approach is its careful consideration of musical elements and how they figure in defining objects under study."--Thomas L. Riis, author of Frank Loesser "Music historians will find Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry fascinating because instead of rehashing the already well-researched lyric import of the spirituals, Graham looks at the art form as the spark that ignited an entertainment industry." --ARSC Journal "A detailed and valuable genealogy of the spiritual."—The Journal of Southern History"Graham skillfully illuminates the racial dynamics of the era, handling with particular grace the equivocal effect of the spirituals’ popularity on artistically ambitious black performers: although performers took advantage of burgeoning professional opportunities, their careers were circumscribed by the expectations of white audiences. A pleasure to read, the book weaves meticulous research into an engaging narrative that vividly enriches understanding of postbellum American music and theater.”—Choice "This book is recommended to anyone with an interest in American folk and popular music, and it should provoke many followers-up studies that explore its themes in even greater depth as well as their extensions into the twentieth century." --Journal of Folklore Research"A pleasure to read, the book weaves meticulous research into an engaging narrative that vividly enriches understanding of postbellum American music and theater. Highly recommended." --Choice"Sandra Graham breaks new ground in her nuanced examination of the white-controlled spiritual or jubilee industry, and of claims for musical and cultural authenticity by black college and independent jubilee groups, as well as white and black performers of blackface minstrelsy, American folk music, and European classical traditions."--Portia K. Maultsby, coeditor of Issues in African American Music and African American Music: An Introduction, second edition

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Book SynopsisFor generations, migration moved in one direction at a time: migrants to host countries, and money to families left behind. The Labor of Care argues that globalization has changed all that. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez spent five years alongside a group of working migrant mothers. Drawing on interviews and up-close collaboration with these women, Francisco-Menchavez looks at the sacrifices, emotional and material consequences, and recasting of roles that emerge from family separation. She pays particular attention to how technologies like Facebook, Skype, and recorded video open up transformative ways of bridging distances while still supporting traditional family dynamics. As she shows, migrants also build communities of care in their host countries. These chosen families provide an essential form of mutual support. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of today's transnational familysundered, yet inexorably linked over the distances by timeless emotions and new forms of intimacy.Trade Review"Francisco-Menchavez’s deep research provides readers with a finely textured feel for the complex circuits of care within transnational families. Her work, in close collaboration with a Filipino domestic worker support group, is a major contribution to our understanding of Filipina migrant workers in the U.S., the care communities they create in the diaspora, and the relationships they sustain with the family members they have left behind, but who remain present in their emotional and virtual lives."--Ai-jen Poo, Executive Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance"What is unique about Francisco-Menchavez's book is that it injects and offers a sociological perspective--one that is hopeful, uplifting--in the struggles of families to maintain a strengthened intimacy in spite of physical proximity."--Hella Pinay "The Labor of Care is an excellent book that advances our understanding of migration, transnational families, and care work." --Symbolic Interaction"Valerie Francisco-Menchavez's work advances a burgeoning literature on both care work and transnational families in creative and significant ways. This book will make a significant intervention in the literature on transnational domestic workers, their families, and definitions of family.-"-Eileen Boris, coauthor of Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State"Francisco-Menchavez offers a wonderfully nuanced analysis of transnational family formations and strategies for care within the context of globalization. This book is an outstanding example of engaged research; a must-read for those committed to a scholar-activist agenda."--Robyn Rodriguez, author of Migrants for Export: How the Philippines Brokers Labor to the World"Francisco-Menchavez brings a number of things to light, some of which serve as contextual reminders throughout the book and others of which activate new categories of understanding that frame the book's central focus of investigation. . . .This book is important in revealing the intense emotional labors that go into keeping the transnational family afloat often through decades of painful, forced separation." --Gender & Society"The Labor of Care brings the scholarship up to date on the technological advances that enable intimacy for transnational family members." --AAARI"This book is definitely a must-read for scholars interested in the sociological aspect of transnational migration and for those interested in methodological advances in ethnographic research."--Journal of Contemporary Asia

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Among the most valuable contributions of Vogel's book is an entire chapter devoted to Baldwin's as yet unpublished play, The Welcome Table. . . . Vogel's adept interpretation of the play . . . is among the strongest works on late Baldwin now in print." --Journal of American History"Vogel help[s] us to 'catch up' to Baldwin by freeing us from previous misconceptions of the important work he did in his late career." --African American Review "Clearly and concisely written with a snap in his prose. No one has focused on this era and its unique importance in the way Joseph Vogel has done."--Ed Pavlic, author of Who Can Afford to Improvise? James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners "In his incisively reasoned and beautifully written volume, James Baldwin and The 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era, Joseph Vogel picks up on Baldwin's theme of digging through the rubble and, in doing so, unearths new pieces of Baldwin's late years." --Black Perspectives"A stand-out in recent African American history and literary studies, certainly worth the time of anyone interested in Baldwin or modern America." —Robert Greene II, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Book Review (online)"While scholars have started to chip away at the critical consensus that James Baldwin lost his way as a writer after the mid-1960s, very few critics have paid attention to the last decade of the writer's work. As Vogel argues in this insightful and elegantly written book, Baldwin remained a vital force in American letters."--Douglas Field, author of All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBonnie Ritter Outstanding Feminist Book Award, Feminist & Women Studies Division of the National Communication Association, 2019 "In Search of Belonging is the first ethnographic project to consider how Latina audiences decide their cultural, social, and economic value to the nation via media representations of the self." --Latino Studies"Báez's timely and pathbreaking book explores the missing link in the literature of Latinx cultural studies, which have focused on matters of production or representation but seldom on Latinx audiences as active agents of their own. Her in-depth ethnography of audiences makes this original work a must-read for scholars working in the fields of Latinx studies, but also media, American Studies, and gender studies more generally."--Arlene Dávila, author of El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America "Báez skillfully explores how audiences who critique stereotyped Latina characters and the whitewashing of celebrities also engage in contemporary practices of femininity that reflect normative social values. . . . This book is well suited for advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars and provides a strong methodological example for emerging ethnographic researchers." --Journal of Cinema and Media Studies"Báez makes a seminal contribution with this smartly researched study. She gives voice to U.S. Latinas as they enact cultural citizenship, offering important insights on how Latinas consume media for a sense of affirmation, belonging, and empowerment."--Mary C. Beltrán, author of Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIrving Lowens Book Award, 2020 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award, 2020 "A necessary exploration of how race has shaped the opera landscape in the United States and South Africa."--New York Times"This book reveals and examines the entire hidden history of race in opera and presents us with a vision of the art form as an inherently powerful and liberating cultural force. This is a power punch of a book and not to be missed." --Book Riot "This wide-ranging and-a positive sense-provocative study . . . should interest anyone concerned with teaching and studying the shifting functions of opera in an even more shifting world."--Opera News"Nestled within the disciplines of musicology, ethnomusicology, African Studies, and cultural theory, this truly interdisciplinary monograph points to a new way to analyze music's place in the past and the present."--New Books Network"Andre explores the background, identity and intention of the composer and librettist, and the genre, in a way that is illuminating and paints a vivid picture for the reader. . . .Overall, this book does contribute greatly to the literature in the field and is relevant to musicologists, sociologists of music and culture, as well as practitioners in the field of opera." --Ethnic and Racial Studies"A most welcome, insightful, deeply rooted and felt study, admirably researched and written. It is rich with ideas about how opera is presented and received, and with astute reflections on the troubling ways that race, racism, segregation, colonization, gender, sexuality, and sexism play into decisions about what operas are performed, how they are performed, and how they are heard and seen."--Ellie M. Hisama, author of Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon"A compelling companion to Rosalyn Story's important text And So I Sing. Where Story focused on constructing the general historiography, Black Opera expands this to a more analytical discussion of how black women have been represented socially, visually, and aesthetically through certain operatic roles. This perspective is unique, innovative, and fills a void in the scholarship on opera."--Tammy Kernodle, author of Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams

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Book SynopsisA host of international organizations promotes the belief that education will empower Kenya's Maasai girls. Yet the ideas that animate their campaigns often arise from presumptions that reduce the girls themselves to helpless victims of gender-related forms of oppression. Heather D. Switzer's interviews with over one hundred Kenyan Maasai schoolgirls challenge the widespread view of education as a silver bullet solution to global poverty. In their own voices, the girls offer incisive insights into their commitments, aspirations, and desires. Switzer weaves this ethnographic material into an astute analysis of historical literature, education and development documents, and theoretical literature. Maasai schoolgirls express a particular knowledge about themselves and provocative hopes for their futures. Yet, as Switzer shows, new opportunities force them to face, and navigate, new vulnerabilities and insecurities within a society that is itself in flux.Trade ReviewSecond runner-up, Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, African Studies Association Women's Caucus, 2019 Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award, Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), 2020 "Switzer's book draws from her empirical research with over 100 Kenyan Maasai schoolgirls. . . .Switzer does a brilliant job of bringing to light the complexities of the context and the paradox of what education promises these girls therein. . . . This book is worth reading." --Feminist Africa"The book both dispels any misapprehensions about the helplessness, and the hopelessness, of Maasai girls and directly refutes the developmentalist discourse that sees girls' empowerment as a panacea for the developing world's problems." --H-Africa"One of the only books that I know which draws on and shares the perspectives and experiences of schoolgirls themselves, thus challenging dominant ideas that they are especially passive, vulnerable, or incapable of articulating their complicated and changing lives. As such, the book directly challenges broad, abstract claims by development donors and other champions of 'the girl effect.'"--Dorothy L. Hodgson, author of Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous: Postcolonial Politics in a Neoliberal World"When the Light is Fire is a book that forces you to confront the many contradictions, paradoxes and nuances of 'schoolgirl.' What Valerie Walkerdine set out to explore several decades ago in Schoolgirl Fictions is now taken up by Heather Switzer in relation to contemporary Maasai culture. As central to its obvious contributions to deepening an understanding of girls' education, Switzer’s rich analysis offers a fascinating critique of global policy and neoliberalism. The book is compelling reading for scholars in variety of areas including girlhood studies, feminist research, and development studies."--Claudia Mitchell, coeditor of Girlhood and the Politics of Place"When the Light is Fire captures children and education in Africa . . . the book exhorts us to critically reexamine our perception of education in the twenty-first century, especially in transnational development discourse." --African Studies Review

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Scandinavians in Chicago is clearly a major scholarly work within whiteness studies and the topic of white privilege." --Norwegian-American Studies"It is an understatement to say that Erika Jackson's book fills an urgent void." --Scandinavian Studies"Recommended." --Choice​"Jackson's book makes a very welcome and thought-provoking contribution to the study of both Scandinavian America and the social construction of whiteness." --H-Net Reviews"Erika K. Jackson's study joins and enriches the growing literature employing the revised paradigm proposed by Paul Spickard. Her work provides a welcome and valuable foundation for further investigation of the ays Nordic (hyper)whiteness was a crucial component in development of Scandinavian identity in other locations, including rural areas, and as it intersects with religious communities." --Journal of American History"Jackson's concise monograph opens new ground in the history of whiteness and white privilege. . . .Employing a range of sources, especially the Scandinavian American newspapers of the era, she presents a compelling case for this important but often overlooked group of ethnic Americans." --History: Reviews of New Books"Dobson provides a thought-provoking overview of critical views on digital humanities. He points repeatedly and with vigor at crucial aspects to consider when doing digital humanities in the tradition of literary criticism." --Journal of Literary Theory"Jackson's study is a well-crafted and fascinating look at the Scandinavians' relationship with race in the U.S. It breaks new scholarly ground but has also clear contemporary relevance, as racial nationalism and white supremacy have been making a troubling comeback in the U.S. political mainstream." --American Studies in Scandinavia "It is an understatement to say that Erika Jackson's book fills an urgent void." --Scandinavian Studies "Makes a significant and long overdue contribution to Swedish- and Scandinavian American history by explicitly framing the Chicago experiences in a larger ethno-racial American context. By doing so, Jackson places herself in the forefront of Scandinavian American historiography."--Dag A. Blanck, coeditor of Norwegians and Swedes in the United States: Friends and Neighbors "Erika Jackson's fascinating book is a key and timely contribution to the fields of whiteness studies and Scandinavian studies in America. This lucid study examines Scandinavians in Chicago through a range of interlinked critical approaches. Cultural history at its best."--Arne Lunde, author of Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"McKee's intersectional feminist perspective on the complexity of transnational adoption is crucial for broadening the practices of kinship so that adoptive families are not predetermined as the better and only future." --Journal of American Ethnic History"In Disrupting Kinship, Kimberly McKee unpacks the macro and micro dimensions of adoption's impact on the lives of Korean adoptees, and charts the development of what she calls the transnational adoption industrial complex. Her book is required reading for its critical interdisciplinary approach to understanding the history of Korean international adoption and its legacy."--Catherine Ceniza Choy, author of Global Families: A History of Asian American Adoption in America​"Disrupting Kinship is a timely book that contextualizes the creation and history of the transnational adoption industrial complex and identifies many of adoption's effects and repercussions, systematically as well as individually. McKee skillfully connects the historical construction of adoption to contemporary issues through diverse interdisciplinary approaches." --Adoption and Culture"McKee challenges the mainstream adoption narrative, which privileges notions of love and family by focusing on the rhetoric of child-saving rescue. . . . A welcome contribution to the study of Korean transnational adoption, especially through its engagement with the concepts of family, kinship, belonging, citizenship, and agency." --H-Net Reviews"Disrupting Kinship is a vital contribution that makes visible the transnational adoption industrial complex as a de factor social welfare option, and a sociopolitical reality that adoptees negotiate in daily life." --Journal of American-East Asian Relations

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Book SynopsisBlack women undertook an energetic and unprecedented engagement with internationalism from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. In many cases, their work reflected a complex effort to merge internationalism with issues of women's rights and with feminist concerns. To Turn the Whole World Over examines these and other issues with a collection of cutting-edge essays on black women's internationalism in this pivotal era and beyond. Analyzing the contours of gender within black internationalism, scholars examine the range and complexity of black women's global engagements. At the same time, they focus on these women's remarkable experiences in shaping internationalist movements and dialogues. The essays explore the travels and migrations of black women; the internationalist writings of women from Paris to Chicago to Spain; black women advocating for internationalism through art and performance; and the involvement of black women in politics, activism, and global freedom struggles. ConTrade Review"These collected accounts of globetrotting black women transform and expand the concept of black internationalism. Whether traveling for political, leisure, or educational reasons, all of the women whose lives are highlighted here needed to see the world for themselves and to develop their own ideas about their places in it. Their courage and intellectual curiosity drove them to explore the world and make it theirs."--Barbara D. Savage, author of Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion "To Turn the Whole World Over is a brilliant, timely, must read book for the study of black women's internationalism and the unfinished struggle for global black freedom."--Erik S. McDuffie, author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism "Thorough, critical, and well-executed." --Ms. Magazine"This innovative collection demonstrates how black women protested their systematic exclusion from the ranks of state power by practicing their own brand of international relations that advanced the global liberation struggle." --H-Net Reviews

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Smith makes a convincing case for the many ways in which social participatory dance can bring bodies together in public spaces to assert their right to be present and to critique dominant values and power structures. . . . Certainly ambitious." --World of Music"His research is extraordinarily meticulous and comprehensive. . . . A vital resource for anyone invested in the potency of dance as a platform for social justice." --Journal of Dance Education"A respected musicologist and vernacular musician, Smith offers a sprawling overview of vernacular dance in the US as evidence of people's 'contesting, constructing, and reinventing social orders'. Highly recommended." --Choice"Ambitious study." --Journal of Southern History"A very ambitious and impressive study. The breadth and scope of the book are remarkable. It is highly engaging and readable and expands our understanding of the potential of dance (and music/sound) to serve as a potent force for social engagement."--Julie Malnig, editor of Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Innovative, creative, and unapologetically spiritual, Building Womanist Coalitions reminds us why womanism is still as relevant today as it was several decades ago when Alice Walker first coined the term."--David Ikard, author of Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs"Building Womanist Coalitions is a helplful resource for an instructor interested in better understanding womanist readings and or methodologies into the classroom." --Wabash Center Journal on Teaching

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fenderson traces the rise and fall of Black Arts Movement through Fuller's professional and personal endeavors and elucidates the larger implications of the movement through the microcosm of Fuller and his environs. Fenderson convincingly contends that Fuller should take his rightful place in the scholarship as a pivotal intellectual architect who helped build the artistic component of the Black power movement." --Journal of American History"Building the Black Arts Movement is both thoroughly researched and beautifully written with a sharp class and gender analysis. As such, it will reshape how historians approach this movement and its historical actors." --Journal of African American History"Fenderson succeeds in challenging readers to rethink Fuller's times by presenting a counternarrative to the oftentimes overly harmonious representation of Black social movements in the United States." --Journal of Folklore Research"Jonathan Fenderson’s book is a masterwork of African American intellectual and cultural history, bringing to light a man whose name should be mentioned more often in the histories of contemporary America." --Society for U.S. Intellectual History"Very powerfully and marvelously written--a page turner. Fenderson's book is bound to reach a wide audience with this mastery of narrative and exposition. Indeed, I don't think that the story of the Black Arts Movement has been told in such a sweeping narrative of that era."--Komozi Woodard, author of A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics​"Jonathan Fenderson's Building the Black Arts Movement is a brilliant study of one of the key figures of the Black Arts and Black Power movements. Fenderson's account of Fuller is also a history of Black Arts and Black Power in Chicago that in turn illuminates the ideological, aesthetic, and institutional development of black political and cultural radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s."--James Smethurst, author of The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewShelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies, International Committee of the American Studies Association (ASA), 2019 "The World in a City is one of the first texts to fully examine the implications of pre-World War II Los Angeles as a hub for industrial and agricultural laborers." --Journal of Urban History"The World in a City is a wonderful resource for historians of California and the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, labor historians, and radical historians." --Western Historical Quarterly"David Struthers makes a fine contribution to the growing body of scholarship examining ethnic interaction among L.A.’s working-class communities." --Southern California Quarterly"David Struthers's fresh and fascinating look at Los Angeles radicalism shows us long-forgotten facets of city history. Dedicated anarchist activists, an alphabet soup of radical organizations, an interracial rank-and-file--all had a profound impact on Los Angeles's transformation into a modern city. Struthers's mix of research and fluid storytelling takes us back to an era of soaring hopes and racial togetherness that, for a time, sustained a grand vision of a Los Angeles that might have been.--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles"This is an important book, and I hope that we soon see more similarly compelling work on this period that does not separate local interethnic campaigns from the context of global revolution that helped animate them." --Journal of American History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brent M. S. Campney details lynchings and other forms of anti-Black violence from the antebellum era to the 1940s in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. . . . Hostile Heartland succeeds in demonstrating that the Midwest was not paradise for African Americans." --Journal of African American History"With clear, engaging prose, Campney's Hostile Heartland: Racism, Repression, and Resistance in the Midwest speaks to the historiographies of the Midwest's importance, lynching and antiblack violence more generally, and activism." --American Historical Review"Brent M. S. Campney returns to the themes of his groundbreaking work This is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927 in which he argued that white Kansans liked to imagine that their state was a model of enlightened progress in race relations. . . . Hostile Heartland thoroughly and convincingly documents the chilling ferocity of racist violence." --Kansas History"Hostile Heartland challenges assumptions about the 19th-century Midwest as ‘a land of pastoral virtue – a ‘Garden of Eden’ – where racist violence was anomalous.’ On the contrary, Campney argues that in the antebellum era ‘white mobs in the Midwest most certainly lynched free blacks and fugitive slaves. . . . The entire text would be useful in upper-division undergraduate courses and is essential for graduate-level study on racist violence and Midwestern history." --Choice"Hostile Heartland is the result of prodigious research informed by recent scholarship that grapples with the definition of lynching itself. . . . [Campney] is careful to never reduce the black residents of the Midwest to mere victims and devotes considerable space to accounts of black agency and resistance. . . . Campney’s most timely argument [is] that in the twentieth century an increasingly professional police force and court system both quelled racist mobs and essentially assumed their role in maintaining white supremacy. [Campney makes] a notable contribution by positing a long history of northern lynching, and this work will be of interest to scholars of U.S. racial violence and black exclusion." --Pacific Historical Review"Campney has written an ambitious, well-researched, and valuable study that deepens our understanding of just how commonplace and horrific mob violence . . . was over the course of more than a century. . . . He is particularly sensitive to what he calls ‘the multigenerational effects’ of racial violence on African Americans. " --Missouri Historical Review"There is much in this volume that is smart and thought-provoking, and I believe that it will inspire a number of more-detailed studies of such violence in the Midwest…. Campney provides a thought-provoking discussion of the possibility of numerous private lynchings in the 1930s and beyond, episodes driven into obscurity by concern over how they would reflect upon communities; I believe that on this subject and the others raised in this volume, multiple dissertations will be launched." --Indiana Magazine of History"In this very smart book, Brent Campney builds upon his vast research unearthing the history of racist violence in America's heartland. Hostile Heartland is a thorough and impressive work that challenges Midwesterners' time-honored penchant for claiming progressive superiority over the South when it comes to matters of racial egalitarianism and violence. Any reader who has ever contemplated race relations or racist violence in the Midwest today will find clear answers and lines linking the present to the past within these pages. Hostile Heartland opens much-needed windows onto the histories of race relations in the Midwest and the Great Migrations of African Americans to the region."--Kidada E. Williams, author of They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies about Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I "Hostile Heartland is a thickly researched survey that draws a striking picture of just how precarious life was for African American migrants to the Midwest." --Journal of Southern History "Brent Campney's Hostile Heartland: Racism, Repression, and Resistance in the Midwest is an excellent and much needed historical account. . . . Well-written and succinct, this book powerfully documents an oft-forgotten practice in the Midwest, decentering the South as the only region with a very long history with anti-black violence." --Annals of Iowa

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Trade Review"The color line in the United States has historically been and continues to be White vs. Black, yet the salient strength of Raced to Death is to make evident that the color line is, more accurately, White vs. Non-White."--Karen L. Ishizuka, author of Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties "Okamura's work opens the door for further reflection on how this history fits into larger patterns of U.S. race relations." --Nichi Bei Weekly"A fascinating account linking racism to colonialism, labor, and criminal justice in an unexpected setting. Okamura’s book makes it impossible to forget Hawai i when studying comparative race and ethnic relations."--Lon Kurashige, author of Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewChoice Outstanding Academic Title, 2020 "A deeply persentist examination of a rich, dynamic 1970s." --Journal of American History"A deeply presentist examination of a rich, dynamic 1970s." --Journal of American History"Deeply informed and persuasively argued, this wide-ranging yet cohesive collection of original essays illuminates the inter-workings of black activism and expressive culture in and beyond the 1970s. With its rigorous historical contextualization and compelling commentary on how the 1970s anticipated and influenced our own moment, Black Cultural Production After Civil Rights is sure to become an invaluable resource for contemporary scholars working in the fields of African American literature and print culture; film studies; popular culture; feminist history and theory; and trauma and memory studies."--Aida Levy-Hussen, author of How to Read African American Literature: Post-Civil Rights Fiction and the Task of Interpretation"The essays gathered here speak to one another in remarkable ways, both because of the authors' commitment to the material and the editor's guidance. This volume is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the complexities and influences of African American culture in the 1970s." --Choice"A harmoniously blended symphony in the interests of Black folks, culture, and justice." --Ethnic and Racial Studies"This wide-ranging collection of essays on literature, feminism, performance, publishing, Black Power, and the afterlife of slavery brings depth and texture to our studies of the post-civil rights era. As Black artists and activists mounted calls to liberation in the 1970s, they also faced a mushrooming carceral industry, white supremacist violence, and the rise of neoliberalism. This urgent and refreshing text returns our attention to that volatile decade and to the ways cultural production provided the vital means for engaging with and reimagining the world."--Erica R. Edwards, author of Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shared Selves mines the Latinx archive by placing lesser-known texts into conversation with authors such as Ortiz Cofer and Rechy. A must-read for anyone interested in the variability of the life-writing form and its continuing relevance for Latinx literary criticism."--David J. Vázquez, author of Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Idenity"I really admire this book! Suzanne Bost offers a reading of Latinx life writing that moves us all toward an elsewhere that transcends the humanistic individual and toward a sense of being that emphasizes webs of relations. This is necessary work that positions us to better encounter today’s ethical and material challenges, including the inequities of climate crisis."--Priscilla Solis Ybarra, author of Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An intriguing collection of stories about the origins and purposes of African dance . . . Hot Feet and Social Change, is a strong resource." --African Studies Quarterly"The collection is generally well conceived and will surely provide inspiration for the dance world." --Choice"Many of the authors are themselves the sources of both dance traditions created within the last decades and of significant studies about them. This work is unprecedented and, thanks to its insider perspectives, only possible as the editors have constructed it."--Sheila S. Walker, editor of African Roots, American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas

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Trade ReviewCertificate of Excellence, Illinois State Historical Society, 2021 "Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance invites a new generation of scholars to keep digging into the scarcely tapped and rich history of Black Chicago and its influence on US history." --Society for US Intellectual History"Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance makes a compelling case for starting any history of Black culture and arts in Chicago well before the traditional start date of the Chicago Renaissance in the 1930s." --Society for US Intellectual History”An important work of intellectual and cultural recovery. It brings to the surface corners of Chicago's vibrant intellectual and cultural life that we have never considered or simply heard about in passing. The archival depth and artistic breadth will powerfully add to a much broader understanding of black cultural renaissance both geographically and conceptually.”—Davarian L. Baldwin, author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life"Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance has many pleasures for readers interested in African-American history, art history, Chicago history and, indeed, US history, and one is the opportunity to learn about important but little-known figures from a century and more ago." --Third Coast Review"Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance ultimately presents a rich, varied tapestry for understanding some of the foundational moments of Black Chicago's cultural and literary history. No doubt future studies will continue to build on some of the insights presented by this volume." --Journal of American Ethnic History "Highly recommended." --Choice"The Black Chicago Renaissance (BCR) remains a relatively understudies moment in 20th-century African American cultural history. . . . An engrossing account of the formative period that led to the BCR of the 1930s and 1940s. . . . A highly informative, albeit imperfect, step toward a fuller reconstruction of the pre-BCR years." --Science and Society"This is the book we’ve been waiting for--revelatory at every turn--attesting to the creative ferment of black Chicago in the early years of the twentieth century. Courage, Reed, and an impressive range of contributors give us the vital 'prequel' to the Black Chicago Renaissance, through new stories of writers, artists, dancers, tastemakers, and cultural entrepreneurs who made Chicago a center of the New Negro movement."--Liesl Olson, author of Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Weems is an extremely diligent researcher and provides an excellent introduction to Overton. The book is as much a history of Black business in Chicago during Overton's life as a conventional biography and a picture of an era." --Journal of American History"In The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire, historian Robert E. Weems Jr. offers a comprehensive biography of an important Black businessman who has largely faded in public memory. . . . Weems is appropriately critical of Overton throughout. . . . An excellent book that is both rich in historical detail and eminently readable." --Journal of African American History"The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago clears the air around one of Black America's most successful businessmen and his time . . . a fascinating read." --Business History Review "An excellent business study of Anthony Overton . . . Weems skillfully evaluates Overton's neglected career, his diverse holdings, and the importance of his family in overseeing the corporate empire." --Choice"Robert E. Weems Jr. recalls the booms and busts of one of the leading African American entrepreneurs of the twentieth century and restores him to his rightful place in American business history." --Publishers Weekly"Mixes business history with a fascinating profile to tell the story of Anthony Overton." --Chicago Sun-Times​"Weems has produced a pioneering study of Chicago's preeminent financial titan of the Black Metropolis Era of the 1920s and beyond. This first full-length, thoroughly documented account of Anthony Overton meticulously details how he amassed a business fortune while building an empire that became a major source of empowerment for women ranging from executive and managerial appointments to essential clerical positions.”—Christopher R. Reed, The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920–1929

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Book SynopsisThis fresh and fascinating exploration of Ebony's political, social, and historical content illuminates the intellectual role of the iconic magazine and its contribution to African American scholarship. The magazine's status as a consumer publication helped to mediate its representation of African American identity in both past and present.Trade ReviewOne of the Chicago Sun-Time's Books Not to Miss A Black Perspectives Best Black History Book of 2020 Honorable Mention, Research Society for American Periodicals, 2021 "By emphasizing Bennett's role and placing the magazine within the context of each stage of the postwar Black Freedom Struggle, West thoughtfully connects Black Americans' historical perspectives with the social transformations occurring in postwar America." --Journal of African American History"West thoroughly dispels the critical tendency to dismiss or overlook a magazine like Ebony as too commercially oriented to be of cultural or historical significance." --American Literary History"West presents media scholars and educators with a new way of viewing Ebony and its founder, John Harold Johnson. Thanks to West, researchers are better able to visualize Ebony as more than 'a black counterpart to Life magazine' and Johnson as more than just an entrepreneur who targeted his magazine's content to the black bourgeois." --American Journalism”E. James West’s book is the first major examination of Ebony as a forum for black historical discourse and the magazine’s long-time executive editor Lerone Bennett Jr.’s multifaceted thought, work, and scholarship as a leading popular historian of the black past and vital contributor to the post-war black history movement. A well-researched and accessible study situated within the growing field of black intellectual history, Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr. is a major contribution to our understanding of what West aptly calls 'popular black history.'”—Pero G. Dagbovie, author of Revisiting the Black Past: The Use and Misuse of African American history in the Twenty-First Century"West expertly chronicles how Ebony magazine and its executive editor Lerone Bennett Jr. shaped cultural perception of African-American history. . . . This astute history shines a welcome light on a pioneering journalist. " --Publishers Weekly"A fantastic, deeply-contextualized new book about Ebony and Bennett." --IMixWhatILike"This concise, illuminating book serves as a useful marker for a full-fledged (and long overdue) critical history of Ebony, a major American magazine, in all its glories and travails." --PopMatters"Recommended." --Choice

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Book SynopsisAfrican Americans who moved to California in hopes of finding freedom and full citizenship instead faced all-too-familiar racial segregation. As one transplant put it, The only difference between Pasadena and Mississippi is the way they are spelled. From the beaches to streetcars to schools, the Golden Statein contrast to its reputation for toleranceperfected many methods of controlling people of color.Lynn M. Hudson deepens our understanding of the practices that African Americans in the West deployed to dismantle Jim Crow in the quest for civil rights prior to the 1960s. Faced with institutionalized racism, black Californians used both established and improvised tactics to resist and survive the state's color line. Hudson rediscovers forgotten stories like the experimental all-black community of Allensworth, the California Ku Klux Klan's campaign of terror against African Americans, the bitter struggle to integrate public swimming pools in Pasadena and elsewhere, and segregationists'Trade Review"West of Jim Crow explores the surge of violence precipitated by the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. . . . Black Californians responded with grassroots activism as they continued to demand access to homeownership, schools, and public spaces. Through the men and women themselves, Hudson provides incredible insight to California's racial battlegrounds." --Pacific Historical Review"Hudson's book illuminates just that: how contestations over public and private spaces as they related to race were tied together through the web of resistance that Black Californians engaged in as they utilized tactics that would become better known in the mid-twentieth century." --Journal of American Ethnic History"Outstanding history and an absorbing read. . . . Highly recommended." --Choice"Thoughtful and well-written . . . Hudson has produced an impressive and finely wrought study of racial discrimination in the Golden State and the courageous and determined African American activists who challenged it in the courts and on the streets." --California History"West of Jim Crow is among the best introductions to Black California history yet written . . . an elegant synthesis that will doubtlessly stand the test of time." --Boom California"West of Jim Crow is a thorough account of California’s racist history that furthers understanding of racism in the United States." --Foreword Review"Powerfully argued, deeply researched, and alive with vivid portraits of little known freedom fighters, West of Jim Crow drives a stake through the heart of one of American history’s most persistent myths: that racial segregation and discrimination were peculiar to the South. By tracing the metamorphosis of white supremacy in the Golden State and the fierce resistance to it over the long span from statehood to the 1950s, Lynn Hudson has brilliantly plumbed the depth, complexity, and variability of American racial formations and added a new chapter to our understanding of the long black freedom movement and of women’s centrality to it."--Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, author of Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of AmericaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1 Freedom Claims: Reconstructing the Golden State 2 “This is Our Fair and Our State”: Race Women, Race Men, and the Panama Pacific International Exposition 3 “The Best Proposition Ever Offered to Negroes in the State”: Building an All-Black Town 4 A Lesson in Lynching 5 Burning Down the House: California’s Ku Klux Klan 6 “The Only Difference Between Pasadena and Mississippi is the Way They Are Spelled”: Swimming in the Southland Epilogue: Remembering (and Forgetting) Jim Crow Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Many comics hone their craft primarily to amuse, but with this thoughtful, academic work, Morgan explores the idea of Black satire with an added function: to more or less safely rock the boat, expressing ideas that might otherwise be tuned out or provoke uncomfortable or even dangerous backlash." --Library Journal"Morgan explores a radical impulse in recent Black comedy, arguing that performers like Dave Chappelle or films like 'Get Out' aim to highlight racial boundaries." --New York Times"In Laughing to Keep from Dying, Danielle Fuentes Morgan crafts an innovative and well-considered account of African-American satire. . . . Morgan's prose is clear and engaging, and her language accessible and compelling." --Journal of American Culture"Exceedingly well-written, well-researched . . . Recommended." --Choice "A satisfying read for anyone with an interest in how entertainment responds to a shifting social landscape." --Atlantic"Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century is a must-read for anyone (like us) who has needed reminding lately why the risks of irony are worth taking." --Humor"Danielle Fuentes Morgan's Laughing to Keep from Dying is a major contribution to African American literary and cultural studies and to the study of satire and other forms of humor in the United States. Taking as her focus satirical texts in the twenty-first century, Morgan argues that recent African American satirical works reassert an ethical position present in black cultural expressions since slavery, that literature and art instantiate a humanity that its authors perennially assume to be a matter of fact. But rather than positing respectability politics, contemporary African American satire advocates a 'kaleidoscopic blackness,' one that embraces the many subtle and subversive ways that black people make meaning. Contemporary African American satire, as the title indicates, is more than a salve for oppression; its purpose is to keep black people from dying. In this stunning debut, Morgan places herself in the company of Glenda Carpio, Terrence Tucker, and most recently Lisa Guerrero."--Darryl Dickson-Carr, author of Spoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance"Danielle Fuentes Morgan attunes readers to the variable registers and resonances of Black laughter in the present moment. Examining a wide range of media, from novels and television series to standup comedy and performance art, Morgan shows how the satirical impulse in Black cultural production expresses not only collective histories of subversion but individual practices of survival. A bold account of humor’s capacity to traverse the realms of sociality and interiority, Laughing to Keep from Dying is a model of Black study for the twenty-first century." --Kinohi Nishikawa, author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary UndergroundTable of ContentsAcknowledgments< br/>Introduction: The Satirical Mode and African American Identity< br/>1 "The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake": Slavery and the Satiric Impulse< br/>2 "Race is Just a Made-Up Thing": Abject Blackness and Racial Anxiety< br/>3 "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong": Vulnerability and Satiric Misfires< br/>4 "How Long Has This Been Goin’ On, This Thang?": Centering Race in the Twenty-First Century< br/>Conclusion: Black Futurity and the Future of African American Satire< br/>Notes< br/>Works Cited< br/>Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"What makes this book a priceless contribution to the field of sport history is Ariail's argument that the athletic victories of Black women in track and field surpassed the sports stage and directly impacted political relationships with the Unites States and forged America's image. . . . I highly recommend this book as it intermingles foreign politics, American values, and challenges experienced by Black women in track and field seeking to reach the epitome of athleticism." --Journal of Sport History"Ariail's intersectional analysis of race and gender is detailed in explication of white and Black press representations of--as well as coaches', track-and-field officials', and politicians' public statements about--Black women track and field athletes. . . . Passing the Baton is an important reconsideration of Black women athletes' physical and representational performances as ideological work equivalent to other cultural workers and civil rights leaders." --Journal of American History​"Passing the Baton is engaging, optimistic, and unsentimental--it elucidates a rarely discussed period of American athletic history and thus offers much value to any demographic." --Journal of African American Studies"Cat Ariail's Passing the Baton is a thoughtful and engaged study that brings a focus on the personal to the scholarship focused on the importance of track stars to the development of a Cold War sporting culture in the United States. . . . Ariail's attention to uncovering and illuminating the voices of these young track stars invigorates her study and provides a detailed understanding of how Black women moved in spaces that were defined by whiteness and masculinity." --Journal of African American History"A worthwhile addition to public-library collections on Black American sports, Olympic history, and gender studies." --Booklist"Ariail pinpoints how important the women of track and field were to changing opinions in both white and black communities about the accomplishments of women of color. But she also powerfully argues that this story does not end with victory. Rather, she reminds us how much work gender did (and does) to undergird racism."--Katherine C. Mooney, author of Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the RacetrackTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Raising the Bar: Alice Coachman and the Boundaries of Postwar American Identity, 1946-1948 Chapter 2. Sprints of Citizenship: Identity Politics and Black Women’s Athleticism, 1951-1952 Chapter 3. Passing the Baton Toward Belonging: Mae Faggs and the Making of the Americanness of Black American Track Women, 1954-1956 Chapter 4. Winning as American Women: The Heteronormativity of Black Women Athletic Heroines, 1958-1960 Chapter 5. “Olympian Quintessence”: Wilma Rudolph, Athletic Femininity, and American Iconicity, 1960-1962 Conclusion. The Precarity of the Baton Pass: Race, Gender, and the Enduring Barriers to American Belonging Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Best 184-page love letter to Chicago." --Chicago Reader"This is a beautiful and hopeful ode to Black Chicago: its music, dance, creativity, innovation, hustle, history, connections, generations and more." --Ms. Magazine"Contreras's Chicago is a place where the dreams of the driven come true. Her world, elaborately described with poetic language, is not only a nice place to visit but one where those of us who envision a brighter and better Chicago must take up residency if we want our visions to become manifest." --Chicago Magazine"This book reads like an excellent DJ’s set on a night out: filled with hits and some satisfying B-sides and a unique blend that only a real master could muster." --TRiiBE"[Contreras is] a sharp connector of local history, with a knack for weaving seemingly disparate threads of Black Chicago into a fresh portrait." --Chicago Tribune"Contreras puts virtually every aspect of Black Chicago culture, music, business breakthroughs, and more on the table, then shows exactly how they are all interconnected. She writes the book as the Black experience is actually lived--this guy knows that guy, but the other guy used to work for the two of them. And none of it would’ve happened were it not for a certain audacious manner of hope and optimism found in Black Chicago."--Lee Bey, author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago's South Side"In Energy Never Dies, Ayana Contreras crafts an intensely intimate and loving portrait of Black Chicago that that will illuminate, even to lifelong South and West Siders, the distinctiveness of our cultural history and worldview. This book offers urgently needed blueprints for extending the work and actualizing the dreams of the Great Migrants."--Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, coeditor of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema

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Book SynopsisOften seen as ethnically monolithic, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in fact successfully pursued evangelism among diverse communities of indigenous peoples and Black Indians. Christina Dickerson-Cousin tells the little-known story of the AME Church's work in Indian Territory, where African Methodists engaged with people from the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles) and Black Indians from various ethnic backgrounds. These converts proved receptive to the historically Black church due to its traditions of self-government and resistance to white hegemony, and its strong support of their interests. The ministers, guided by the vision of a racially and ethnically inclusive Methodist institution, believed their denomination the best option for the marginalized people. Dickerson-Cousin also argues that the religious opportunities opened up by the AME Church throughout the West provided another impetus for Black migration. Insightful and Trade Review"An excellent study that analyzes the role of the AME Church members in westward expansion and migration who provided stability and institution building to many Black settlements in the West, incorporated Black Indians within the larger African American community, and evangelized among Native American populations."--Lawrence S. Little, author of Disciples of Liberty: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Age of Imperialism, 1884-1916Table of ContentsPreface ixAcknowledgments xiA Note on Terminology xiiiIntroduction: The Drums of Nonnemontubbi 11 Richard Allen, John Stewart, and Jarena Lee: Writing Indigenous Outreach into the DNA of the AME Church, 1816–1830 122 Seeking Their Cousins: The AME Ministries of Thomas Sunrise and John Hall, 1850–1896 343 The African Methodist Migration and the All-Black Town Movement 574 “Ham Began . . . to Evangelize Japheth”: The Birth of African Methodism in Indian Territory 825 “Blazing Out the Way”: The Ministers of the Indian Mission Annual Conference 1006 Conferences, Churches, Schools, and Publications: Creating an AME Church Infrastructure in Indian Territory 1197 “All the Rights . . . of Citizens”: African Methodists and the Dawes Commission 154Notes 173Index 227

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Although the essays in this volume provide a selective history of early Black American music, they illustrate a desire to extend and enrich our understanding of Black musicking. As such, they have fulfilled the editorial goals of their original publications while contributing to new narrative strategies for American music history."--Sandra Jean Graham, from the Introduction

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Book SynopsisThis second volume of Music in Black American Life offers research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and Black Music Research Journal, and in two book series published by the University of Illinois Press: Music in American Life, and African American Music in Global Perspective. In this collection, a group of predominately Black scholars explores a variety of topics with works that pioneered new methodologies and modes of inquiry for hearing and studying Black music. These extracts and articles examine the World War II jazz scene; look at female artists like gospel star Shirley Caesar and jazz musician-arranger Melba Liston; illuminate the South Bronx milieu that folded many forms of black expressive culture into rap; and explain Hamilton''s massive success as part of the 'tanning' of American culture that began when Black music entered the mainstream. Part sourcebook and part survey of historic music scholarship, Music in BlTrade Review"Each of these chapters unearth, explore, and explain ideas, facts, events, phenomena, and records that have been neglected, forgotten, ignored, falsified or were unknown. They invoke musicological contexts that are grounded in archival and ethnographical research that illuminates the evolution of black music-making as it shifts from the insularity of communal spaces to the public medium of popular culture and precipitated the aberration of racial, social, and gender norms."--Tammy L. Kernodle, from the Introduction

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"What is most beautiful about these chapters is the way that Bynum maintains a delightful voice, a first-person perspective that centers her own pleasure in the researching and writing of this book. Her curiosity permeates each page. . . . She models for the reader what it is to read with curiosity and how to allow the interiority of others to inform our own, resulting in a communal experience." --Little Village Magazine “Sit down, read this book, and become a changed reader, scholar, and human. Sit down, and learn from Tara Bynum about worlds of Black experience--joy, longing, pleasure--beyond the white gaze. Through her brilliant literary research and reading of early African American literature, Bynum achieves the full humanity that a viciously segregated, racialized world denies all of us: some in body, some in understanding and spirit. In so doing, this book exemplifies what the humanities should be all about.”--Joanna Brooks, author of Why We Left: Untold Songs and Stories of America's First ImmigrantsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Matter of Black Living Phillis Wheatley’s Pleasures James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s Joyful Conversion Desiring John Marrant David Walker’s Good News Coda; Or, Reading Pleasures: Looking for Arbour/Obour/Orbour Notes Index

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Book Synopsis Winner in theLAMMY Awards – Lambda Literary Awards, LGBTQ+ Studies category Evangelical Christians and members of the global LGBTQI human rights movement have vied for influence in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Each side accuses the other of serving foreign interests. Yet each proposes future foreign interventions on behalf of their respective causes despite the country’s traumatic past with European colonialism and American imperialism. As Erin L. Durban shows, two discourses dominate discussions of intervention. One maintains imperialist notions of a backward Haiti so riddled with cultural deficiencies that foreign supervision is necessary to overcome Haitians’ resistance to progress. The other sees Haiti as a modern but failed state that exists only through its capacity for violence, including homophobia. In the context of these competing claims, Durban explores the creative waysTrade Review"A captivating work of cultural history, offering a window into how the nation is perceived by foreign powers as well as how it perceives itself.An inventive and astute dissection of Haiti’s evolving notions of sexual identity." --Kirkus Reviews“In The Sexual Politics of Empire, Erin L. Durban asks how same-sex desiring and gender creative Haitians pursue their world-making projects in the midst of the necropolitics of US empire, inviting readers to confront the politics of the present so as to sustain different possible futures.”--Janet R. Jakobsen, author of The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics“Durban's pioneering work ventures where angels fear to tread. Context is everything. It is about the dance, a negotiation between our indigenous selves and westernizing forces where new identities live, between the 4 Ms--Masisi, Madivin, Makomè, Miks--and a global LGBT movement.”--Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, author of In the Shadow of Powers: Dantes Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought"Durban's book presents a penetrating analysis of homophobia in Haiti and links it to an ongoing imperial agenda of the US government. Her insight into the nature of same sex desiring and gender creative people and the challenges they face in a society fraught with interference from different religious sects as well as international LGBTQIA+ organizations is not only masterly, but she is able to make an incisive argument for the need to look beyond superficial reasons of race and gender." --Feminist EncountersTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Dedications Introduction 1 Perverting Haiti: The Transnational Imperialist Discourse of the Black Republic as the Premodern Land of “Voodoo/Vaudoux” 2 The Missionary Position: U.S. Protestant Missionaries and Religious Homophobia 2008 3 Evangelical Christian Homophobia and the Michèle Pierre-Louis Controversy 4 “Zonbi, Zonbi” at the Ghetto Biennale: A Queer Act of Intervention against Postcolonial Homophobia 2010 5 The Sexual Politics of Rescue: The Global LGBTQI and Postcolonial Homophobia after the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti 2013 6 The Emergence of a Social Movement against Homophobia Epilogue: The Transnational #BlackLivesMatter Movement and the Serialization of Black (Queer) Death Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Dream Books and Gamblers is a must read! Schlabach impressively weaves together a fascinating narrative about Chicago’s policy racket between 1890 and 1968. A major contribution to the fields of business and Black women’s histories, Schlabach illuminates Black women’s important and multifaceted role in the urban gambling enterprises. Dream Books and Gamblers is certain to transform our understanding of African American history, leaving scholars with new ways of researching and discussing Black life and culture.”--LaShawn Harris, author of Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers RunnersTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction “The Best Job I Ever Had” Chicago’s First Policy Queens Chicago’s Most Famous Policy Queen Dream Books, Fortune-Tellers, and Mediumship What Arrest Records Reveal Legal Strategies for Policy Women Conclusion Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Well researched and engaging . . . Valuable background reading for anyone interested in sports activism." --Kirkus Reviews“In his insightful book, Gregory Kaliss traces the revolutionary undercurrents that charged American sports during the Sixties. His collection of essays reveals how the era’s political and cultural forces transformed the sporting arena into a stage for political activism among athletes of nearly every background. Kaliss deftly investigates how The Athletic Revolution, as it was known, redefined American sports and produced a backlash in its wake.”--Johnny Smith, J.C. “Bud” Shaw Professor of Sports History, Georgia TechTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Timeline of Key Events Prologue: Cassius Clay Declares Independence Introduction: The Fire This Time 1. Playing for “Green Power”: Sports and Economic Uplift 2. Getting into the Race: Women Runners / Women’s Rights 3. College Athletes Flex Their Muscles 4. Black Men / Black Gladiators: Redefining Black Manliness through Sports 5. The ABA and the Origins of Hip-Hop America Conclusion: Activism Unfinished Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston’s literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what socio-cultural and institutional values and processes shape the different ways we read her work? Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall considers the polar receptions to Hurston’s two areas of achievement by examining the critical response to her work across both fields. Drawing on a wide range of readings, Freeman Marshall explores Hurston’s popular appeal as iconography, her elevation into the literary canon, her concurrent marginalization in anthropology despite her significant contributions, and her place within constructions of Black feminist literary traditions. Perceptive and original, Ain’t I an Anthropologist is an overdue reassessment of Zora Neale Hurston’s place in American cultural and intellectual life.Trade Review"As the public, scholars, writers, and creatives continue to engage with Hurston through ongoing book releases, studies, documentaries, and festivals, Freeman Marshall’s work provides an important intervention that calls us to think about how we reconstruct and deploy Hurston as not only a talented storyteller and incisive ethnographer but also a consummate intellectual." --Another Chicago"Freeman Marshall makes clear that Hurston’s reputation as an anthropologist has been undermined by the glamour of her rediscovery and subsequent literary 'canonization' . . . . Freeman Marshall also compellingly argues that 'Hurston’s anthropological work has not been more fully recognized within the field of anthropology in part due to the marginalization of American folklore and in, in particular, African American folklore within the discipline.' Hopefully, with this new study, Hurston’s contributions to anthropology will finally be recognized." --Southern Review of Books"Doomed to obscurity, Zora Neale Hurston was then resurrected as a 'founding mother' of Black literature and folklore. Yet her pioneering work in African diaspora ethnography and anthropology, especially her work in Haiti, remains little-known. . . . Marshall concludes that Hurston’s refusal to be defined as 'tragically colored' formed her genius as she 'embraces . . . the right to feel and be herself, idiosyncratic and sometimes puzzling, like any member of the human race.'" --Booklist starred review"An insightful read about how academic obscurity can pigeonhole the legacy of Black women thinkers. Hurston’s fascination, esteem, and passion to capture, preserve and return to the African diaspora their new world folk traditions used academic methods and Africana means to share our interior selves. . . . Freeman Marshall contends that 'contextualization and a commitment to interdisciplinarity remain central' to excavating Hurston. This excavation serves as a prism through which collective literary and cultural works can contribute to transformative ways of reading and understanding the hybrid Black feminist agency and legacy crafted by Zora Neale Hurston by her people for her people and humanity writ large." --Black Perspectives"A fascinating examination into the work of Zora Neale Hurston as an anthropologist, which has been all but forgotten, especially in comparison to her work as a writer and cultural icon. " --Ms. Magazine“Jennifer Freeman Marshall combines razor sharp analysis and clear prose that compel the reader to think carefully and critically about why Zora Neale Hurston is lionized in literature and marginalized in anthropology. Like a quilt, Freeman Marshall’s book has a strong frame, an aesthetically pleasing design, and an impeccable yet creative logic.”--Lee D. Baker, author of Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture"Freeman Marshall unfolds a Hurston whose anthropological work contributed to her ramified sense of difference and variegation in the lived world. Hurston emerges as situated simultaneously in her selfhood and her experience as a Black woman. As an anthropologist, Hurston tells stories that are 'multiple and ... grounded by ... diverse communities.’ Recommended." --Choice"Undoubtedly, Ain't I an Anthropologist should be essential reading for students and scholars of anthropology, as well as African American literature and folklore studies. With its careful and exhaustive documentation of the Black feminist literary and anthropological scholarship on Hurston's oeuvre, this book is both an archive and a treasure trove of information about Zora Neale Hurston that teaches us how to approach her work in new ways." --American AnthropologistTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: “Twice as Much Praise or Twice as Much Blame” On Firsts, Foremothers, and “The Walker Effect” Signifying “Texts”: The Race for Hurston Deconstructing an Icon: Tradition and Authority “Ain’t I an Anthropologist?” Mules and Men: “Negro folklore [. . .] is still in the making” The author arrives at no conclusion”? Reading Tell My Horse Notes Works CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisJewish anarchism has long been marginalized in histories of anarchist thought and action. Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer edit a collection of essays which recovers many aspects of this erased tradition. Contributors bring to light the presence and persistence of Jewish anarchism throughout histories of radical labor, women's studies, political theory, multilingual literature, and ethnic studies. These essays reveal an ongoing engagement with non-Jewish radical cultures, including the translation practices of the Jewish anarchist press. Jewish anarchists drew from a matrix of secular, cultural, and religious influences, inventing new anarchist forms that ranged from mystical individualism to militantly atheist revolutionary cells. With Freedom in Our Ears brings together more than a dozen scholars and translators to write the first collaborative history of international, multilingual, and transdisciplinary Jewish anarchism.Trade Review“This volume vividly recaptures the lost world of Jewish anarchism, tracing its political imaginaries as well as the social structures and practices that it built. Spanning multiple continents and centuries, it offers a new way of approaching the Jewish radical experience in the past--and potentially rethinking its possibilities in the present.”--Faith C. Hillis, author of Utopia's Discontents: Russian Émigrés and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s–1930s“This is the first book of its kind in English and each contribution is original and important. Not only does the collection add to the quantity of studies, it steers research on the subject in new directions. Traditionally, anarchism’s connections to religious thought have been ignored, the presumption being they have nothing to do with one another. These authors show otherwise.”--Tony Michels, author of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliteration Introduction. Freedom’s Fullness: An Introduction to Jewish Anarchisms Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer Chapter 1. Johann Most and Yiddish Anarchism, 1876-1906 Tom Goyens Chapter 2. Political Satire in the Yiddish Anarchist Press, 1890-1918 Binyamin Hunyadi Chapter 3. Jewish Anarchist Temporalities Samuel Hayim Brody Chapter 4. The Debate on Expropriations in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Anarchism Inna Shtakser Chapter 5. Translation, Politics, Pragmatism, and the American Yiddish Press Ayelet Brinn Chapter 6. Jews and North American Anarcho-Syndicalism: The Jewish Leadership of the Union of Russian Workers Mark Grueter Chapter 7. The Storm of Revolution: The Fraye Arbeter Shtime Reports on the Russian Revolution of 1905 Renny Hahamovitch Chapter 8. Divine Fire: Alfred Stieglitz’s Anarchism Allan Antliff Chapter 9. In the Jewish Tower: Prison Stories by a Forgotten Anarchist Ania Aizman Chapter 10. Jewish-American Anarchist Women, 1920-1950: The Politics of Sexuality Elaine Leeder Conclusion. The Past and Futures of Jewish Anarchist History Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer Contributors Index

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Trade Review“This book is a breath of fresh air. Kristie Soares recuperates joy and its multiple Latinx variants, such as gozando, choteo, and silliness, as radical empowering practices. It is a brilliant challenge to critical approaches that only focus on Latinx negative affect.”--Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, author of Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans PerformanceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Dancing in My Parents’ Living Room and Other Stories About Joy Gozando: Gendered Discourses of Pleasure in Early Salsa Precise Joy: The Gendered Performance of Affect in the Young Lords Party Choteo and the Family Sitcom: Poking Fun at Cuban Masculinities in ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.? Dancing with Death: Celia Cruz’s Azúcar and Queer of Color Survival Dale: Queer Racialized Excess in Pitbull’s Miami Coda Politicized Silliness in a Time of Crisis: Notes on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Hmong diaspora radiates from Southeast Asia to include far-flung nations like the United States, New Zealand, and Argentina. Sangmi Lee draws on the concept of diasporic identity to explore the contemporary experiences of Hmong people living in Vang Vieng, Laos, and Sacramento, California. Hmong form a sense of belonging based on two types of experiences: shared transnational cultural and social relations across borders; and national differences that arise from living in separate countries. As Lee shows, these disparate influences contribute to a dual sense of belonging but also to a transnational mobility and cultural fluidity that defies stereotypes of Hmong as a homogenous people bound to one place. Lee’s on-the-ground fieldwork lends distinctive detail to communities and individuals while her theoretically informed approach clarifies and refines what it means when already hybrid and dynamic identities become diasporic. In-depth and interdisciplinary, Reclaiming Dia

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Book SynopsisRemarkable for its relentless truth-telling, and the depth and thoroughness of its investigation, for the freshness of its sources, and for the shock power of its findings. Even a reader who is not unfamiliar with the sources and literature of the subject can be jolted by its impact.--C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books Dark Journey is a superb piece of scholarship, a book that all students of southern and African-American history will find valuable and informative.--David J. Garrow, Georgia Historical Quarterly Trade ReviewWinner of the Bancroft Prize in American History and the McLemore Prize of the Mississippi Historical Society. Also named an Outstanding Book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An engaging study of a particularly intriguing and little-studied group with much to tell us about the construction of race and ethnicity and the dynamics of migration and community."--Sarah Deutsch, Clark UniversityTable of ContentsPreface: Of Marginal Natives and Multiple Identities xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: The Cape Verdeans -- All Shades, All Hues 1 1 Becoming Visible: A Demographic Profile 35 2 From Archipelago to America: A Sentimental Geography 67 3 Working the Bogs 99 4 Living -- Just Enough for the City 131 5 Identity Matters: The Immigrant Children 163 Appendix 179 Bibliography 187 Index 209 Illustrations follow page 98

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Book SynopsisWinner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Mississippi Historical Society McLemore Prize, the Herbert G. Gutman Prize and the Gustavus Myers Center for Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Prize. Publication of this book was supported by a grant from DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.Trade ReviewWinner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Mississippi Historical Society McLemore Prize, the Herbert G. Gutman Prize and the Gustavus Myers Center for Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Prize.

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Book SynopsisIn this collection, sixteen scholars explore topics as diverse as the historical debate over black athletic superiority, the selling of sport in society, the eroticism of athletic activity, sexual fears of women athletes, and the marketing of the marathon.In line with the changing nature of sport history as a field of study, the essays focus less on traditional topics and more on themes of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and national identity, which also define the larger parameters of social and cultural history. It is the first anthology to situation sport history within the broader fields of social history and cultural studies.Contributors are Melvin L. Adelman, William J. Baker, Pamela L. Cooper, Mark Dyreson, Gerald R. Gems, Elliott J. Gorn, Allen Guttmann, Stephen H. Hardy, Peter Levine, Donald J. Mrozek, Michael Oriard, S. W. Pope, Benjamin G. Rader, Steven A. Riess, Nancy L. Struna, and David K. Wiggins.Trade ReviewA CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 1998. "Impressive! Pope presents a variety of new social, cultural, and economic approaches to the study of sports in American society."--George B. Kirsch, author of Golf in America

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Book SynopsisA study that deals with the courage and vigor with which African-American women fought for their freedom during and after the Civil War. Focusing on slave women on the rice plantations of lowcountry South Carolina, it offers an account of their vital roles in antebellum plantation life and in the wartime collapse of slavery.Trade ReviewWinner of the Willie Lee Rose Publication Prize, the Southern Association of Women Historians, 1998. "A pleasure to read! Brimming with insight, prickly about assumptions too easily arrived at in earlier literature, briskly and pointedly written. Schwalm's book is a valuable intervention in the critical debate over the transition from slavery to freedom in the American South."--Stephanie McCurry, author of Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country"This compelling, well-documented work offers us an intriguing look at a particular group of black women and their struggles to work for themselves and their communities on their own terms. Clearly, it makes a significant contribution to Civil War and Reconstruction-era historiography."--Jacqueline Jones, author of The Dispossessed: America's Underclass from the Civil War to the PresentTable of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Introduction 1 PART 1: SLAVERY 1. "Women Always Did This Work": Slave Women and Plantation Labor 19 2. "Ties to Bind Them All Together": The Social and Reproductive Labor of Slave Women 47 PART 2: SLAVERY'S WARTIME CRISIS 3. "A Hard Fight for We": Slave Women and the Civil War 75 4. "Without Mercy": The End of War and the Final Destruction of Lowcountry Slavery 116 PART 3: DEFINING AND DEFENDING FREEDOM 5. "The Simple Act of Emancipation": The First Year of Freedom 147 6. "In Their Own Way": Women and Work in the Postbellum South 187 7. "And So to Establish Family Relations": Race, Gender, and Family In the Postbellum Crisis of Free Labor 234 Notes 269 Bibliography 363 Index 383 Illustrations follow pages 46 and 144

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