Racially profiled and wrongfully imprisoned during his second year at Harvard Law School, hip-hop activist Bryonn Bain successfully sued the New York City Police Department and wrote the ""Village Voice ""cover story ""Walking While Black."" Now Bain has taken his own disturbing experiences of racial profiling and personal demoralization and turned them into teachable moments for an entire nation. ""The Ugly Side of Beautiful ""takes an unflinching look at the injustices of our prison system and strives to help us think outside the cage.
Sterling Plumpp
Ornate with Smoke
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Poetry that comes out of the jazz music of African American artists.
B. J. Bolden
Urban Rage in Bronzeville
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An examination of the work of Gwendolyn Brooks with the background of the current socio-political scene in Chicago's Bronzeville in its heyday.
Sterling Plumpp
Velvet Bebop Kente Cloth
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This collection is the third in a trilogy of poetic works created by Sterling Plumpp to allow audiences to explore the language of music articulated through the nuances of jazz, blues, and bebop. The poetry in Velvet Be Bop Kente Cloth utilizes distinct rhythms and a non-conventional use of line and line breaks. It also draws upon the musical innovations established by Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillispie, and others.
Joyce Ann Joyce
Warriors, Conjurers and Priests (Paperback)
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In Warriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism, Joyce Ann Joyce brilliantly merges her vision of African American literary criticism with her understanding of the politics of higher education. Collected together, these essays depict the literary critic as a shaman and literary conjurer, steeped in the spirituality and history of Black culture. Her analysis offers perceptive readings of major Black literary figures of the 20th century - including Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Terry McMillan, Ishmael Reed and others. Professor Joyce demonstrates extensive research, while illustrating the interconnectedness of fiction and poetry to historical, political and cultural reality. At the same time, she provides balanced critiques rather than one-sidedness posing as universality. Most importantly, hers is a voice that recognizes the heterogeneity of the Black community and, in hopes of heightening understanding, does not fear discussing the strengths and weaknesses of diverse views.
Joyce Ann Joyce
Warriors, Conjurers and Priests (Hardcover)
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In Warriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism, Joyce Ann Joyce brilliantly merges her vision of African American literary criticism with her understanding of the politics of higher education. Collected together, these essays depict the literary critic as a shaman and literary conjurer, steeped in the spirituality and history of Black culture. Her analysis offers perceptive readings of major Black literary figures of the 20th century - including Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Terry McMillan, Ishmael Reed and others. Professor Joyce demonstrates extensive research, while illustrating the interconnectedness of fiction and poetry to historical, political and cultural reality. At the same time, she provides balanced critiques rather than one-sidedness posing as universality. Most importantly, hers is a voice that recognizes the heterogeneity of the Black community and, in hopes of heightening understanding, does not fear discussing the strengths and weaknesses of diverse views.
Maulana Karenga
Million Man March/Day of Absence
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A comprehensive treatment of the 1996 Million Man March using essays, photographs, and poetry.
Brenda M. Greene
Meditations and Ascensions
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Representing conversations from the Eighth National Black Writers Conference in 2006, this collection provides in-depth meditations and analyses of literature by black writers. Reflections on the black experience, the American experience, and a more global experience and worldview are all widely discussed, as well as future trends and ascensions for black literature. Students, teachers, journalists, and other writers will welcome the chance to view parts of the writing process and see inside the heads of prominent black writers. Participants include Marita Golden, Walter Mosley, Ishmael Reed, Herb Boyd, Valerie Boyd, Haki R. Madhubuti, Elizabeth Nunez, Tananarive Due, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Camille Yarbrough, Susan McHenry, and many others.
Mzee Lasana Okpara (Fred Lee Hord)
Longer Than Breath
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When I met Toussaint, I was struck instantly by both his name and demeanor. Over the years, it became clear my son-in-law was a new Toussaint, principled warrior, and community leader. This book of poems is an extended conversation between me and his widowed wife, my daughter. So how many Black women have lost life partners, this, however, was not the result of external violence, just the wearing away of his body. Their love remains intact.
Wade Hudson
Journey
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Joyce Ann Joyce
Ijala (Hardcover)
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A landmark critical approach to the study of African American poetry, this seminal work sanctions the view that the voices of the Black Arts Movement are valid areas of scholarly inquiry.
Gwendolyn A. Mitchell
House of Women
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Creating a storyteller's circle where women share their joy, pain, and experience, the poems in this collection are lyrical vignettes, in which women sing familiar songs of love, solidarity, and sisterhood.
Herb Boyd
Harlem Renaissance Redux
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There has been a surfeit of books on the storied Harlem Renaissance, but Herb Boyd has given this historical era a fresh reprise. While the usual decade or more of turn of events and characters are present, Boyd's connects the period with other cultural and political developments. He shows how the Harlem Renaissance is ineluctably bound with the Garvey movement, particularly with a coterie of writers who shared their genius with Garvey's Negro World publication along with their contributions in such breakthrough books and political organs as Alain Locke's The New Negro, the Crisis, The Messenger, and Opportunity magazine.
Jacqueline Imani Bryant
Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha
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Ten literary experts on the work of Gwendolyn Brooks unite in this collection to provide in-depth analysis on ""Maud Martha."" Through various essays, this volume explores socio-economic implications, the portrayal of the Black family and the Black woman, the contemporary culture in Chicago's Bronzeville, and the literary skills of Brooks.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Groundwork (Limited Signed Copies)
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(Limited Signed Copies) Thirty years of poems and a few essays of Don L. Lee beginning in the militant Black Arts Movement and metamorphosing into the more mature yet critical voice of Lee as Haki R. Madhubuti. The subject is consistently political and poetic as it challenges the people of the world to rights the wrongs committed against Black people and all oppressed people of the world.
James D. Montgomery Sr.
Full Circle - Race, Law & Justice (Hardcover)
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Full Circle is the story of one of the foremost attorneys of the last half century - Attorney James D. Montgomery, Sr. He is recognized as a well-respected statesman and passionate advocate who has devoted his career to challenging racist systems and policies espoused by the American justice system. Working with other Civil Rights Leaders of the time, Attorney Montgomery fought for - often with little or no pay - a fair criminal justice system, desegregated Chicago public schools, fair housing, and an end to police brutality.
Delores P. Aldridge
Focusing
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This timely work propels our understanding of African American men and women beyond the crossroads. Dr. Aldridge's insight and vision place Black male-female relationships in a liberating framework from which Blacks can initiate the crucial tasks of reclaiming ourselves, restoring our traditions, and reconstructing the African world.
Kwaku Person-Lynn
First Word
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An informative collection of narratives (in their words) from some of the most prominent and important Black scholars, artists. From Kwaku Person-Lynn: The most important thing to remember is that the person I am talking with has a body of knowledge that needs to be preserved for the next generation. We needed to hear our history and culture from our perspective….To know that thousands were listening to the teachings of John Henrik Clarke, Cheikh Anta Diop, Yosef-ben-Jochannan, Ivan Van Sertima, Frances Cress Welsing, W.E.B. DuBois, Asa Hilliard, Na’im Akbar, and many others was transformative to so many lives.
Randall Horton
Fingernails Across the Chalkboard
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Featuring a wide assortment of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, this powerful volume confronts the existence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic within the Black Diaspora. Defining a cultural dialogue that will be prevalent well into the 21st century, these writings celebrate life and the living by humanizing the effects of HIV and giving powerful voices to the affected and afflicted. The writings, presented in four major sections, speak out about the hard-hitting truths that surround HIV; the forms of abuse, such as incest and rape, which cast HIV into the lives of girls and women; the issues of grief and loss; and the range of reactions, from acceptance to denial, activism, and the search for justice. The writers featured include Dennis Brutus, Tony Medina, Randi Triant, Truth Thomas, Duriel Harris, Frank X. Walker, Arisa White, Tara Betts, and Lamont B. Steptoe.
Philip C. Kolin
Emmett Till in Different States
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The poems in Emmett Till in Different States span more than 7 decades of events in Emmett Till’s legacy from the 1940s to the present. In them Philip Kolin shows how Emmett Till’s importance has expanded from being a Civil Rights martyr to becoming a choric, heroic commentator on the tragedies of Civil Rights injustices (e.g. Medgar Evers’s murder, the Freedom Riders, the murders of Chicago’s children, Trayvon Martin), and a voice of conscience for America to hear and heed. The title of this collection points to the multiple ways we can see Emmett Till through time and space (e.g. geographic, historical, psychological, and theological.) Kolin weaves other voices throughout the poems in this collection, most notably Mamie Till, Gospel great Mahalia Jackson who bought Till’s gravestone, an old black woman (Aunt Aretha) who meets Till in the Delta, Till’s fictionalized brothers (other black men who have been slain and their bodies left to rot), his fictionalized sister based upon the Shulamite woman in the Song of Songs, the Chicago River, and even Carolyn Bryant, the white woman whom Till was said to have offended. These voices–and Till’s as well–emerge from a variety of traditions–Biblical, the blues, classical mythology, spirituals. According to Natasha Trethewey, the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States, “In the history of a nation still on the long journey toward full realization of its creed, there are stories that need to be told again and again. The murder of Emmett Till is one such story; it belongs to all of us and should be sung by many different voices. In Emmett Till in Different States, Philip Kolin adds his voice—a necessary retelling so that we might be transformed by the listening.”
Brian Gilmore
Elvis Presley Is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem
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Intertwining wit, satire, sensitivity, and rich verbal imagery, this collection of free verse celebrates the triumph of Black culture.
Askia Toure
Dawnsong!
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The poems in this collection address the cultural and spiritual needs of Black people. In Dawnsong! Toure successfully develops a heroic poetry that creates its own artistic matrix. In these poems Toure takes the reader back to ancient Egypt and, at the same time, demonstrates the relevance of Egyptian history and, at the same time, demonstrates the relevance of Egyptian history and mythology to the lives of contemporary Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.
Linda M. Thurston
Call to Action
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From the blue ribbon group of the American Friends Service Committee's 1990 National Commission on Crime and Justice, this report addresses the problems associated with incarceration.
Herb Boyd
Black Panther Paradigm Shift or Not?
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Black Panther earns three Oscars. Since its inception Marvel Studios’ Black Panther has provoked and stoked a wide range of interest, and now that the blockbuster film is the recipient of three Oscars the film’s acclaim extends beyond the box office. No, it didn’t get the top prize, but it was a barrier breaker as Ruth Carter was the first black woman to ever win in the Costume Design category; and another first for a black artist when Hannah Beachler took the trophy, which she shared with Set Decorator Jay Hart, in Production Design. Additional spice arrived when Ludwig Goransson earned an Oscar for the Best Score in a Motion Picture. These awards and other nominations for Black Panther augurs well for populist cinema that is traditionally scorned when it comes to taking home the coveted awards, particularly an Oscar, which is Marvel’s first. It’s a good bet the honors to Black Panther will not only boost the appreciation for populist cinema, it should also enhance the appeal of a number of products and projects such as Black Panther: A Paradigm Shift or Not? the forthcoming anthology at Third World Press, edited by Haki Madhubuti and Herb Boyd. “All of the celebration and awards for the film is nothing to thumb your nose at and we at Third World Press extend all our good wishes and hope we can do as well with our publication,” said Madhubuti, the press’s publisher and founder. The anthology, which includes more than forty writers, film critics, scholars, and activists, has a timely appearance and should be able to reap some of the renewed media attention the film has sparked. Among the contributors are Nicole Mitchell Gantt, Jelani Cobb, Brent Staples, Abdul Alkalimat, Bobby Seale, Robyn Spencer, Diane Turner, Greg Tate, Maulana Karenga, Marita Golden, and Molefi Keta Asante, et al. As may be discerned from the contributors the anthology is a compilation of mixed views and opinions—with both praise and a critique of the film. “The film has aroused a variety of conclusions, a wellspring of differences that we felt compelled to give them a forum,” said Boyd. “Like the film, the views expressed in the book are often very provocative.”
Thabiti Lewis
Ballers of the New School
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""Ballers of the New School"" uses American sports culture to challenge and explore notions of race in America. Dr. Lewis pushes back against topics such as anti-intellectualism, jingoism, and exploitation in collegiate athletics, as well as the role of sports culture in cultivating notions of masculinity. The book fearlessly critiques and challenges the notion that sports culture has altruistically functioned as a progressive pioneer of social and racial progress and offers a reexamination of the narrative of American sport as a leading contributor to racial progress by pointing to glass ceilings in areas of leadership on and off fields of play. The reconstructions as well as challenges to modern athletes that ""Ballers of the New School"" offers makes it a usable book of sometimes uncomfortable, but necessary truths.
