African American Life – serie

This anthology of plays allows a glimpse into the lives of the people of Onwueme's native Nigeria and reveals the range and beauty of Nigerian culture.This anthology of plays by Tess Onwueme, one of the bright new literary artists in contemporary drama, allows a glimpse into the lives of the people of Onwueme's native Nigeria and reveals the range and beauty of Nigerian culture. At the same time, Three Plays sheds light on the reality of the human condition and the conflicts that arise between the individual and society.

How Black musicians and composers used their craft to define and influence public discourse.This groundbreaking analysis examines how Black music functions as rhetoric, considering its subject not merely reflective of but central to African American public discourse. Author, musician, and scholar Earl H. Brooks argues that there would have been no Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, or Black Arts Movement as we know these phenomena without Black music. Through rhetorical studies, archival research, and musical analysis, Brooks establishes the "sonic lexicon of Black music," defined by a distinct constellation of sonic and auditory features that bridge cultural, linguistic, and political spheres with music. Genres of Black music such as blues and jazz are discursive fields, where swinging, improvisation, call-and-response, blue notes, and other musical idioms serve as rhetorical tools to articulate the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped African American cultural and political development. Examining the resounding artistry of iconic musicians such as Scott Joplin, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson, this work offers an alternative register in which these musicians and composers are heard as public intellectuals, consciously invested in crafting rhetorical projects they knew would influence the public sphere.

How Black musicians and composers used their craft to define and influence public discourse.This groundbreaking analysis examines how Black music functions as rhetoric, considering its subject not merely reflective of but central to African American public discourse. Author, musician, and scholar Earl H. Brooks argues that there would have been no Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, or Black Arts Movement as we know these phenomena without Black music. Through rhetorical studies, archival research, and musical analysis, Brooks establishes the "sonic lexicon of Black music," defined by a distinct constellation of sonic and auditory features that bridge cultural, linguistic, and political spheres with music. Genres of Black music such as blues and jazz are discursive fields, where swinging, improvisation, call-and-response, blue notes, and other musical idioms serve as rhetorical tools to articulate the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped African American cultural and political development. Examining the resounding artistry of iconic musicians such as Scott Joplin, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson, this work offers an alternative register in which these musicians and composers are heard as public intellectuals, consciously invested in crafting rhetorical projects they knew would influence the public sphere.

A classic in the Black literary canon.Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film and television adaptations. A classic in the Black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in the late 1960s. With its focus on the "militancy" that characterized the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man's reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy in ways that make the novel autobiographical and personal. As a tale of a reaction to the forces of oppression, this book is universal.Dan Freeman, the "spook who sat by the door," is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Black Chicagoans to combat racism as"Freedom Fighters" in this explosive novel.

A timely invocation of early Black Christian women writers and their legacy of activism.Weaving together the legacies of early Black Christian women, author April C. E. Langley explores the foundational ways in which faith, poetics, and spirituality have shaped Black activism in the United States. In Repoliticizing the Word Through Poetry and Preaching, Langley employs Afrofuturist and Sankofic lenses to provide a dynamic close reading of the speeches, letters, poems, and sermons of three foremothers of modern Black women's social justice movements—Phillis Wheatley, Maria W. Stewart, and Jarena Lee—and highlights the resistance strategies emerging from their use of religion as a means for imagination and potential liberation. This book shows how Black women's spiritual writing has also inspired and informed intersectional social justice movements of today's era—#SayHerName, #MeToo, and #BlackLivesMatter—as well as impacting the profound works of scholars, politicians, community leaders, and artists such as Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Tarana Burke, Lauryn Hill, and Beyoncé.This timely examination of early Black Christian women and their writing reminds us of the importance of retrieving what is lost to understand where we are and where we are going.

Analyzing the writer as an activist and feminist who helped shape the Black women's movement.Frances E. W. Harper was a pioneering figure in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American literature and intellectual thought. A poet, educator, lecturer, essayist, and novelist, she played a key role in the abolitionist and feminist movements, particularly in shaping the Black women's movement. Despite her influence, her work has remained largely overlooked.In Politics and Poetics, Melba Joyce Boyd explores Harper not only as an activist but as a writer deeply embedded in the African American struggle for "freedom and literacy." Boyd examines Harper's poetry, novels, and speeches through the lenses of race, gender, and class, tracing her radicalism across three periods: the abolitionist years, the pursuit of freedom, and the woman's era. Harper's feminist voice remains strong throughout, particularly as she critiques both slavery and the racism within white feminist circles. Boyd's analysis combines biographical context with thematic and structural insights, illuminating how Harper's art and politics merged to create a powerful, enduring legacy.

In Coleman Young and Detroit Politics, Wilbur Rich delivers the first serious biography of this powerful and fascinating political figure.Coleman Young, elected Detroit's first black mayor in 1973, is the city's longest-serving chief executive. Contentious and contradictory, he was, nonetheless, a savvy and convincing politician. In Coleman Young and Detroit Politics, Wilbur Rich delivers a serious biography of this powerful and fascinating political figure.Abandoned by many labor-organizing colleagues during the Red Scare of the 1950s, Young rescued himself from the purgatory of McCarthyism to become a major power broker in Michigan politics and in the National Democratic Party.As mayor, Young seems to relish the attention, power, and opportunity that comes with the job. With the entire Detroit political community taking their cues from him, it is difficult for the city's residents and their suburban counterparts to be neutral about the man or his politics.In his book, Rich combines biography with political analysis. He outlines the basic strategy underlying Young's approach to policy making and traces the economic changes in the city before and after Young's rise to power. Rich challenges conventional wisdom on the limits of mayoral power and examines Young's role in three key policy areas: affirmative action, economic redevelopment, and the city's fiscal crises.The book provides a link to a larger body of literature on contemporary political analysis as well as topical reading on one of America's most controversial mayors.