Description
Book SynopsisWhen you think of a map of the United States, what do you see? Now think of the Seattle that begot Jimi Hendrix. The Dallas that shaped Erykah Badu. The Holly Springs, Mississippi that compelled Ida B. Wells to activism against lynching. The Birmingham where Martin Luther King, Jr. penned his most famous missive. Now how do you see the United States? Chocolate Cities offers a new cartography of the U.S.-a Black Map that more accurately reflects the lived experiences and the future of Black life in America. Drawing on cultural sources such as film, music, fiction, and plays alongside traditional resources like census data, oral histories, ethnographies, and health and wealth data, the book offers a new perspective for analyzing, mapping, and understanding the ebbs and flows of the Black American experience-all in the cities, towns, neighborhoods, and communities that they create and defend. Black maps are consequentially different from our current geographical understanding of race and place in America. And as the U.S. moves toward a majority minority society, Chocolate Cities provides a broad and necessary assessment of how racial and ethnic minorities make and change America's social, economic, and political landscape.
Trade Review"A very smart new book by two culturally agile sociologists. . . . While Chocolate Cities is a story of inventive adaption, fierce survival and Black joy, it is also a history of trauma and communities under siege. This book stands as a witness to the investment of struggle, skill and resources it has taken to build and sustain chocolate cities. It is also a testament to the criminal failure of America to see and honor these essential points on the map." * Kalamazoo College/Praxus Center *
“If Chocolate Cities were itself made of chocolate, it would come in a variety of forms: the central theses of the book like unsweetened cacao nibs, true and deep-flavored, long-lasting, challenging, surprising. Census data as chocolate bar, scored into bite-size forms. Musical references like the aroma of chocolate, wafting through the room. And the personal stories Robinson and Hunter delve into are multi-layered, well-baked undertakings.” * Memphis: The City Magazine *
"Hunter and Robinson have set out a marker for thinking differently about black people in urban America." * PopMatters *
"Hunter and Robinson offer an insight into the ways black folks have eked out a social world regardless of the racism, segregation, and brutality often concomitant in cities across the North American experience. ... For undergraduates, graduates, and any lay reader interested in black life in the US." * CHOICE *
"A tour de force. Hunter and Robinson work assiduously and effectively to help readers to think about how seemingly disconnected ideas, themes, and practices should be understood together. The book paints a portrait of the complexity of black life, culture, politics, and interests." * American Journal of Sociology *
"
Chocolate Cities offers a critical contribution to urban sociology through its refreshing approach to the cultural geography of Black life. . . .
Chocolate Cities makes compelling theoretical arguments that encourage scholars and practitioners to rethink the relationship between race, racism, culture, and space." * City & Community *
"Hunter and Robinson’s
Chocolate Cities gives sociology a needed shaking up and will influence the discipline for years to come. By putting Black agency at the center of their epistemology, Hunter and Robinson’s
Chocolate Cities cuts across and shapes multiple sociological microcosms." * Sociology of Race and Ethnicity *
"Good books enlighten and educate. Great books mess up your mind. Good books deepen many a field of study. Great books blow holes in many fields of study. Good books deliver a line of argument. Great books reframe and problematize a line of argument. Good books help you settle down and furnish your intellectual home. Great books set you wandering and teach you that you are homeless. Good books bring insight. Great books bring the funk. I could go on with this list of contrasts between good and great. Yes, Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson’ s
Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life is a great book, yes it messed up my mind, and yes it does all those things great books do." * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
Table of ContentsPreface
1. Everywhere below Canada
PART I THE MAP
2. Dust Tracks on the Chocolate Map
3. Multiplying the South
4. Super Lou’s Chitlin’ Circuit
PART II THE VILLAGE
5. The Blacker the Village, the Sweeter the Juice
6. The Two Ms. Johnsons
7. Making Negrotown
PART III THE SOUL
8. When and Where the Spirit Moves You
9. How Brenda’s Baby Got California Love
10. Bounce to the Chocolate City Future
PART IV THE POWER
11. The House That Jane Built
12. Mary, Dionne, and Alma
13. Leaving on a Jet Plane
14. Seeing like a Chocolate City
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
