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Racial Justice
The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States. Her book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation won the 2016 Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book. Her articles have been published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Jacobin, New Politics, The Guardian, In These Times, Black Agenda Report, Ms., International Socialist Review, and other publications. Taylor is Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University.
A day after José Ángel N. first crossed the United States border from Mexico, he was caught and then released onto the streets of Tijuana. Undeterred, N. crawled back through a tunnel to San Diego, where he entered the United States to stay. Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant is his timely and compelling memoir of building a new life in America.
Arriving in the 1990s with a ninth grade education, N. traveled to Chicago where he found access to ESL and GED classes. He eventually attended college and graduate school and became a professional translator.
Despite having a well-paying job, N. was isolated by a lack of legal documentation. Travel concerns made promotions impossible. The simple act of purchasing his girlfriend a beer at a Cubs baseball game caused embarrassment and shame when N. couldn't produce a valid ID. A frustrating contradiction, N. lived in a luxury high-rise condo but couldn't fully live the American dream. He did, however, find solace in the one gift America gave him--his education. Ultimately, N.'s is the story of the triumph of education over adversity. In Illegal, he debunks the stereotype that undocumented immigrants are freeloaders without access to education or opportunity for advancement. With bravery and honesty, N. details the constraints, deceptions, and humiliations that characterize alien life "amid the shadows."
A provocative, strategic plan for a humane immigration system from the nation's leading immigration scholars and activists
During the past decade, right-wing nativists have stoked popular hostility to the nation's foreign-born population, forcing the immigrant rights movement into a defensive posture. In the Trump years, preoccupied with crisis upon crisis, advocates had few opportunities to consider questions of long-term policy or future strategy. Now is the time for a reset.
Immigration Matters offers a new, actionable vision for immigration policy. It brings together key movement leaders and academics to share cutting-edge approaches to the urgent issues facing the immigrant community, along with fresh solutions to vexing questions of so-called "future flows" that have bedeviled policy makers for decades. The book also explores the contributions of immigrants to the nation's identity, its economy, and progressive movements for social change. Immigration Matters delves into a variety of topics including new ways to frame immigration issues, fresh thinking on key aspects of policy, challenges of integration, workers' rights, family reunification, legalization, paths to citizenship, and humane enforcement.
The perfect handbook for immigration activists, scholars, policy makers, and anyone who cares about one of the most contentious issues of our age, Immigration Matters makes accessible an immigration policy that both remediates the harm done to immigrant workers and communities under Trump and advances a bold new vision for the future.
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR
An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos' new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America's racial order? In this "timely and important examination of Latinx identity" (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism.In what Booklist calls "an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument," Gómez "packs a knockout punch" (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country.
Building on the "insightful and well-researched" (Kirkus Reviews) material of the original, the paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing brilliant, timely insight about how Latinos have come to self-identify.
An unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent -- for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.
The wisdom acquired during C. T. Vivian's nine decades is generously shared in It's in the Action, the civil rights legend's memoir of his life and times in the movement. Born in Missouri in 1924, Vivian lived twenty-four years in Illinois before moving to Nashville, where he earned a degree in theology and joined John Lewis, Diane Nash, and others to integrate the city in 1960. After being imprisoned and beaten during the Freedom Rides, he joined Dr. King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta and played leading roles in integration and voting rights campaigns in Birmingham, St. Augustine, and Selma. Over the next half century, he became internationally known for his work for education and civil and human rights and against racism, hatred, and economic inequality. In 2013, Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Vivian passed away peacefully in Atlanta on July 17, 2020.
Vivian was never defined by discrimination and hardship, although he faced many instances of both. The late civil rights leader's heart-wrenching and inspiring stories from a lifetime of nonviolent activism come just in time for a new generation of activists, similarly responding to systems of injustice, violence, and oppression. It's in the Action is a record of a life dedicated to selflessness and morality, qualities achieved by Vivian that we can all aspire to. Bearing a foreword from Andrew Young, the memoir is an important addition to civil rights history and to the understanding of movement principles and strategies.
Winner, James Beard Foundation Book Award, 2016
Art of Eating Prize, 2015
BCALA Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation, Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 2016
Women of African descent have contributed to America's food culture for centuries, but their rich and varied involvement is still overshadowed by the demeaning stereotype of an illiterate "Aunt Jemima" who cooked mostly by natural instinct. To discover the true role of black women in the creation of American, and especially southern, cuisine, Toni Tipton-Martin has spent years amassing one of the world's largest private collections of cookbooks published by African American authors, looking for evidence of their impact on American food, families, and communities and for ways we might use that knowledge to inspire community wellness of every kind.
The Jemima Code presents more than 150 black cookbooks that range from a rare 1827 house servant's manual, the first book published by an African American in the trade, to modern classics by authors such as Edna Lewis and Vertamae Grosvenor. The books are arranged chronologically and illustrated with photos of their covers; many also display selected interior pages, including recipes. Tipton-Martin provides notes on the authors and their contributions and the significance of each book, while her chapter introductions summarize the cultural history reflected in the books that follow. These cookbooks offer firsthand evidence that African Americans cooked creative masterpieces from meager provisions, educated young chefs, operated food businesses, and nourished the African American community through the long struggle for human rights. The Jemima Code transforms America's most maligned kitchen servant into an inspirational and powerful model of culinary wisdom and cultural authority.
Now in paperback, Claudia Rankine's "skyscraper in the literature on racism" (Christian Science Monitor)
In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence, guilt, and violence that arise from addressing Whiteness for what it is? What are the consequences if we keep avoiding this conversation? What might it look like if we step into it? "I learned early that being right pales next to staying in the room," she writes. This brilliant assembly of essays, poems, documents, and images disrupts the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces--the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth--where neutrality and politeness deflect true engagement in our shared problems. Rankine makes unprecedented art out of the actual voices and rebuttals of others: White men responding to, and with, their White male privilege; a friend clarifying her unexpected behavior at a play; and women on the street expressing the political currency of dyeing their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complement Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Funny, vulnerable, and prescient, Just Us is Rankine's most intimate and urgent book, a crucial call to challenge our vexed reality.
Kinky Roots: A Memoir is a 2021 Pencraft Book Award Winner for Non-fiction. It is the memories, ruminations and vignettes of growing up in Southern Africa and moving to the UK. Written from the life, wisdom and experiences of Ingrid Arlington, 'Kinky Roots' is an uplifting, poignant and reflective journey alongside the author. From a tumultuous upbringing in Zimbabwe, where violence and sexual assault was rife - to Ingrid meeting her husband in South Africa before starting an arduous new life in the UK. It's a story that explores how identity, excuses, religion, relationships, self-worth and family heritage all ultimately lay life's crazy pathway. United Kingdom - When Ingrid Arlington looks back on her life, it's been a rollercoaster defined by adversity, poor relationships with men, a move to the other side of the world - and some bold life lessons that have ultimately made Arlington a fearlessly strong woman.In her new memoir, 'Kinky Roots', Arlington invites readers to step alongside her as they rise from the ashes of loss and harassment in Zimbabwe, to a new life in the UK. No step has been without its challenges, yet Arlington steadfastly defines each as a vital part of her story. From the introduction: That day, I felt lost, aimless, purposeless. I had received a rejection from an employment agent saying I didn't get the 33rd job that I'd applied for, whilst sitting on the couch watching NCIS reruns and stuffing my face with all sorts of snacks. I felt like a black Bridget Jones - except I wasn't trying to quit smoking and I already had the man. Now, you might ask how I got myself into this unemployed situation, feeling all sorry for myself. The easy answer is that I moved from South Africa to the UK with Alex (my husband of nine years), to pursue happiness and the European dream but without a plan of how to do this. The difficult answer, I guess, starts a year after arriving."I started re-evaluating my life when I hit unemployment rock bottom in the UK," explains the author. "It was a very raw process of questioning myself and my identity, and reliving my tough upbringing in Zimbabwe - a place where my mother chose her new husband over me, and where I'd been sexually harassed by the age of fourteen. I took a long, hard look at how I'd always chosen controlling men, and felt powerless in every relationship I'd gotten into. As I unraveled things, I began to figure out who I really am. "Continuing, "My biggest life change was meeting my husband in South Africa, only to find him relapsing on a drug habit - fiercely challenging my Christian upbringing. After our separation, I began to mull over everything from excuses, my beliefs, biases around religion, the LGBTQ community, my emotions and how music connects it all - and the definitions I devised are now all shared in this volume". It's going to leave people with plenty to think about.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF TIME'S 100 MOST INFLUENTUAL PEOPLE IN GLOBAL HEALTH "This book is more than a memoir--it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women." --Essence "Legacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a force of nature." --Abraham Verghese, MD "[An] extraordinary family story." --The New York Times Book Review "Required reading for all medical students." --Gayle King, CBS Mornings The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives. What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child--or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother's footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school--were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face. Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our health-care system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock's odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician--to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Major writers from Mexico weigh in on U.S. immigration policy, from harrowing migrant journeys to immigrant detention to the life beyond the wall
Despite the extensive coverage in the U.S. media of the southern border and Donald Trump's proposed wall, most English speakers have had little access to the multitude of perspectives from Mexico on the ongoing crisis. Celebrated novelist Carmen Boullosa (author of Texas and Before) and Alberto Quintero redress this imbalance with this collection of essays--translated into English for the first time--drawing on writing by journalists, novelists, and documentary-makers who are Mexican or based in Mexico. Contributors include the award-winning author Valeria Luiselli, whose Tell Me How It Ends is the go-to book on the child migrant crisis, and the novelist Yuri Herrera, author of the highly acclaimed Signs Preceding the End of the World.
Let's Talk About Your Wall uses Trump's wall as a starting point to discuss important questions, including the history of U.S.-Mexican relations, and questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and borders. An essential resource for anyone seeking to form a well-grounded opinion on one of the central issues of our day, Let's Talk About Your Wall provides a fierce and compelling counterpoint to the racist bigotry and irrational fear that consumes the debate over immigration, and a powerful symbol of opposition to exclusion and hate.
A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.
With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts
On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written and published by eight white clergyman admonishing the civil rights demonstrations happening in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King drafted his seminal response, a foundational text of the Civil Rights Movement, on scraps of paper smuggled into jail. King criticizes his detractors for caring more about order than justice, defends nonviolent protests, and argues for the moral responsibility to obey just laws while disobeying unjust ones.
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" proclaims a message - confronting any injustice is an acceptable and righteous reason for civil disobedience.
This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for social justice and equality.
Why is this letter, born from a jail cell, a timeless and essential call for justice?
A powerful collection of more than 60 of the most politically and socially inspiring letters that have changed the world and the way we see it We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed' Martin Luther King In an era where our liberties are often under threat, Letters to Change the World sends reminders from history that standing up for - and voicing - our personal and political beliefs is not merely a human right but our duty, if we want to make change happen. Featuring Emmeline Pankhurst rallying her suffragettes, George Orwell's warning against totalitarianism, Martin Luther King's "Letters from a Birmingham Jail," Albert Camus on the reasons to fight a war, Bertrand Russell on peace, Nelson Mandela's consoling his children from prison, Time's Up condemning abuses of power, and much more, this collection will inspire you to stand up and speak up - now, for what really matters.
In Letters to My White Male Friends, Dax-Devlon Ross speaks directly to the millions of middle-aged white men who are suddenly awakening to race and racism.
White men are finally realizing that simply not being racist isn't enough to end racism. These men want deeper insight not only into how racism has harmed Black people, but, for the first time, into how it has harmed them. They are beginning to see that racism warps us all. Letters to My White Male Friends promises to help men who have said they are committed to change and to develop the capacity to see, feel and sustain that commitment so they can help secure racial justice for us all. Ross helps readers understand what it meant to be America's first generation raised after the civil rights era. He explains how we were all educated with colorblind narratives and symbols that typically, albeit implicitly, privileged whiteness and denigrated Blackness. He provides the context and color of his own experiences in white schools so that white men can revisit moments in their lives where racism was in the room even when they didn't see it enter. Ross shows how learning to see the harm that racism did to him, and forgiving himself, gave him the empathy to see the harm it does to white people as well. Ultimately, Ross offers white men direction so that they can take just action in their workplace, community, family, and, most importantly, in themselves, especially in the future when race is no longer in the spotlight.
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER and NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop, a passionate call to America to finally reckon with race and start the journey to redemption.
"Powerfully illuminating, heart-wrenching, and enlightening." -Ibram X. Kendi, bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist
"Crushingly powerful, Long Time Coming is an unfiltered Marlboro of black pain." -Isabel Wilkerson, bestselling author of Caste
Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet least understood, Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work--until now. In 2018, Hansberry will get the recognition she deserves with the PBS American Masters documentary "Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart" and Imani Perry's multi-dimensional, illuminating biography, Looking for Lorraine. After the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry used her prominence in myriad ways: challenging President Kennedy and his brother to take bolder stances on Civil Rights, supporting African anti-colonial leaders, and confronting the romantic racism of the Beat poets and Village hipsters. Though she married a man, she identified as lesbian and, risking censure and the prospect of being outed, joined one of the nation's first lesbian organizations. Hansberry associated with many activists, writers, and musicians, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others. Looking for Lorraine is a powerful insight into Hansberry's extraordinary life--a life that was tragically cut far too short. A Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Book for Nonfiction A 2019 Pauli Murray Book Prize Finalist
An important and timely anthology of black British writing, edited and curated by the authors of the highly acclaimed, ground-breaking Slay In Your Lane. Slay in Your Lane Presents: Loud Black Girls features essays from the diverse voices of twenty established and emerging black British writers.
'I so enjoyed stepping inside the minds of these younger women who have so much to say, so much to express, so much to challenge' Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
Being a loud black girl isn't about the volume of your voice; and using your voice doesn't always mean speaking the loudest or dominating the room. Most of the time it's simply existing as your authentic self in a world that is constantly trying to tell you to minimise who you are.
Now that we've learnt how to Slay in our Lanes, what's next?
Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené, authors of the acclaimed Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, invite the next generation of black women in Britain - authors, journalists, actors, activists and artists - to explore what it means to them to exist in these turbulent times.
From assessing the cultural impact of Marvel's Black Panther, to celebrating activism in local communities. From asking how we can secure the bag while staying true to our principles, or how we can teach our daughters to own their voices, to reclaiming our culinary heritage, the essays in Loud Black Girls offer funny touching and ultimately insightful perspectives on the question of 'What's Next?'
Foreword by Bernardine Evaristo
*** Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay**** ****Semi-Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor**** ****Finalist for the New England Book Award**** ****Longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award****
In this engaging follow up to How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, the recipient of PEN New England Award for nonfiction and finalist for the National Book Award sharply examines and explains Black life and culture with equal parts candor and humor.
In Magically Black and Other Essays Jerald Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique to create a bracing and often humorous examination of race in America. He thoughtfully addresses the inherent complexities of topics as eclectic as incarceration, home renovations, gentrification, the crip walk, pimping, and the rise of the MAGA movement, approaching them through various Black perspectives, including husband, father, teacher, and writer. This powerful collection of nonfiction essays captures its overarching theme in the titular essay, which examines the culture of heroic action African Americans created in response to their enslavement and oppression, giving proof to Albert Murray's observation that the "fire in the forging process . . . for all its violence, does not destroy the metal that becomes the sword."
How does one navigate race, family, and identity in a world of absurd contradictions?