{"title":"Literary Criticism--African American \u0026 Black","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"the-souls-of-black-folk-dover-thrift-editions","title":"The Souls of Black Folk (Dover Thrift Editions)","description":"This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy advanced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black leader in America, would only serve to perpetuate black oppression.\u003cbr\u003ePublication of \u003ci\u003eThe Souls of Black Folk\u003c\/i\u003e was a dramatic event that helped to polarize black leaders into two groups: the more conservative followers of Washington and the more radical supporters of aggressive protest. Its influence cannot be overstated. It is essential reading for everyone interested in African-American history and the struggle for civil rights in America.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0486280411\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780486280417\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Du Bois, W. E. B., N\/A, N\/A\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Dover Publications\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Dover Publications","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (May 1994)","offer_id":45658645954757,"sku":"9780486280417","price":6.65,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780486280417.jpg?v=1768902110"},{"product_id":"nothing-personal","title":"Nothing Personal","description":"\u003cb\u003eJames Baldwin's critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAvailable for the first time in a stand-alone edition, \u003ci\u003eNothing Personal\u003c\/i\u003e is Baldwin's deep probe into the American condition. Considering the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020--which were met with tear gas and rubber bullets the same year white supremacists entered the US Capitol with little resistance, openly toting flags of the Confederacy--Baldwin's documentation of his own troubled times cuts to the core of where we find ourselves today. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBaldwin's thoughts move through an interconnected range of questions, from America's fixation on eternal youth, to its refusal to recognize the past, its addiction to consumerism, and the lovelessness that fuels it in its cities and popular culture. He recounts his own encounter with police in a scene disturbingly similar to those we see today documented with ever increasing immediacy. This edition also includes a new foreword from interdisciplinary scholar Imani Perry and an afterword from noted Baldwin scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Both explore and situate the essay within the broader context of Baldwin's work, the Movement for Black Lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the presidency of Donald Trump. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eNothing Personal\u003c\/i\u003e is both a eulogy and a declaration of will. In bringing this work into the twenty-first century, readers new and old will take away fundamental and recurring truths about life in the US. It is both a call to action, and an appeal to love and to life.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0807006424\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780807006429\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Baldwin, James, Perry, Imani, Glaude, Eddie S.\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Beacon Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (May 2021)","offer_id":46080551452869,"sku":"9780807006429","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780807006429.jpg?v=1776038252"},{"product_id":"omeros","title":"Omeros","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOmeros\u003c\/i\u003e is the grand epic poem told in multiple chapters from Nobel Prize-winning poet and playwright Derek Walcott. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith circular narrative design, titled with the Greek name for Homer, \u003ci\u003eOmeros\u003c\/i\u003e simultaneously charts two currents of history: the visible history charted in events--the tribal losses of the American Indian, the tragedy of African enslavement--and the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"One of the great poems of our time.\" --\u003ci\u003eJohn Lucas, New Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0374523509\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780374523503\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Walcott, Derek\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Jun 1992)","offer_id":46080662831301,"sku":"9780374523503","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780374523503.jpg?v=1776039322"},{"product_id":"language-as-liberation-reflections-on-the-american-canon","title":"Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon","description":"\u003cb\u003eNobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eBeloved \u003c\/i\u003eToni Morrison investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation's collective unconscious.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University, Toni Morrison interrogates America's most famous works and authors, drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the country's canonical white writers imagined in their work. Morrison sees these fictions as a form of creation and projection, arguing that they helped manufacture American racialidentity--these \"Africanist\" presences are \"the shadow that makes light possible,\" as Morrison writes, and the reflections of their authors' own deepest fears, insecurities, and longings. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith profound erudition and wit, Morrison breaks wide open the American conception of race with energetic, enlivening readings of the nation's canon, revealing that our liberation from these diminishing notions comes through language. \"How,\" Morrison wonders, \"could one speak of profit, of economy, of labor, or progress, of suffragism, or Christianity, of the frontier, of the formation of new states, the acquisition of new lands . . . of practically anything a new nation concerns itself with--without having as a referent, at the heart of the discourse or defining its edges, the presence of Africans and\/or their descendants?\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTo read these lectures, collected here for the first time, is to encounter Morrison, not just the writer but also the teacher, in the most penetrating and subversive way yet. With a foreword by her son Ford Morrison and an introduction by her Princeton comparative literature colleague Claudia Brodsky, \u003ci\u003eLanguage as Liberation\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelatory collection that promises to redefine the American canon.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0593802748\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780593802748\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Morrison, Toni, Brodsky, Claudia, Brodsky, Claudia\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Knopf Publishing Group\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Knopf Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Feb 2026)","offer_id":46080772899013,"sku":"9780593802748","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback - Large Print (Feb 2026)","offer_id":46080772931781,"sku":"9798217287772","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780593802748.jpg?v=1776040203"},{"product_id":"on-morrison","title":"On Morrison","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn illuminating, electrifying exploration of the work of Toni Morrison by an award-winning novelist and Harvard professor--\"a revelatory encounter with the Nobel laureate's oeuvre\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"In this lavish yet clear-eyed study, Serpell shows how Morrison breathed new life into the novel. This is literary criticism at its finest.\"--\u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"As gripping as it is intellectually brilliant . . . a classic.\"--Cathy Park Hong\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Serpell puts Morrison's genius on full display. This will enthrall Morrison fans.\"--\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Filled with unique analyses, deep dives, and an intellectual playfulness that Morrison herself so valued, this book will stand as one of the most important twenty-first-century works on the great American writer.\"--Imani Perry, author of \u003ci\u003eSouth to America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times, Time, The Today Show, Los Angeles Times, Harper's Bazaar, Ms., Esquire, Vulture, The Millions, \u003c\/i\u003e Well-Read Black Girl, \u003ci\u003eElectric Lit, Kirkus Reviews, Literary Hub, Book Riot\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eToni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, \"she is our only truly canonical black female writer--and her work is highly complex.\" In \u003ci\u003eOn Morrison, \u003c\/i\u003e Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is Morrison as you've never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre--her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry--with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, \u003ci\u003eOn Morrison\u003c\/i\u003e is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 059373291X\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780593732915\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Serpell, Namwali\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Hogarth Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hogarth Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Feb 2026)","offer_id":46080787906757,"sku":"9780593732915","price":30.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780593732915.jpg?v=1776040313"},{"product_id":"paule-marshall-a-writers-life","title":"Paule Marshall: A Writer's Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn elegant biography of a prescient author whose novels portray Black women's experiences across the African diaspora\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGrowing up in World War II-era Brooklyn among West Indian immigrants, Paule Marshall (1929-2019) was fiercely driven to become a writer, making art from the world she knew, the life she lived, and the world she imagined. Though her novels and stories are understood by scholars as the beginning of contemporary Black feminist literature--bridging Harlem Renaissance writers like Zora Neale Hurston to such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou--Marshall's legacy is often overlooked. In this elegant literary biography, distinguished scholar of African American literature Mary Helen Washington draws on exclusive access to the writer's papers, including her newly discovered unpublished memoir, and scores of interviews with family and friends to give us the first account of Marshall's life as an artist and of the depth and brilliance of her work. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeginning with her 1959 debut, \u003ci\u003eBrown Girl, Brownstones\u003c\/i\u003e, a coming-of-age story set among Barbadian immigrants and African Americans in Brooklyn, and moving through her later works set in the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States, Marshall's novels chart the diasporic life that Marshall herself lived, defined by Black women's experiences, an unapologetic and sometimes queer sexuality, and the history of the African diaspora. Despite the lush and finely observed inner lives of her heroines, however, Marshall was famous for tightly guarding her own privacy, and it is this enigma--Marshall's deeply expressive writing versus her guarded public exterior--that Washington draws out. Here is the first look at a prescient, brilliantly talented writer, a complex and fascinating woman, whose fiction single-handedly stages a reverse middle passage that extends from the United States and the Caribbean to Africa.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0300253850\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780300253856\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Washington, Mary Helen\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Yale University Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Yale University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Feb 2026)","offer_id":46081698660549,"sku":"9780300253856","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780300253856.jpg?v=1776048534"},{"product_id":"troubled-lands-stories-of-mexico-and-cuba-as-translated-by-langston-hughes","title":"Troubled Lands: Stories of Mexico and Cuba as Translated by Langston Hughes","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA landmark book--the first complete publication of Langston Hughes's translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore \"the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists,\" and are \"mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days.\" But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled \u003ci\u003eTroubled Lands\u003c\/i\u003e, his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes's translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eTroubled Lands\u003c\/i\u003e features thirty-three stories by eighteen writers, including Rafael Felipe Muñoz, Nellie Campobello, Lino Novás Calvo, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Germán List Arzubide, Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, and Juan de la Cabada. The collection depicts Mexico in the wake of its revolution and Cuba in the years between the brutal regimes of Machado and Batista. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHughes was a noted translator of poetry, but his commitment to translating fiction is less well known. \u003ci\u003eTroubled Lands\u003c\/i\u003e provides a window into this important dimension of his work and illuminates his deep interest in Mexico and Cuba.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 069126841X\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780691268415\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: II, Ricardo Wilson\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Princeton University Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Mar 2026)","offer_id":46099779944645,"sku":"9780691268415","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780691268415.jpg?v=1776644689"},{"product_id":"hardheaded-weather-new-and-selected-poems","title":"Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom Cornelius Eady, one of America's most engaging voices, comes an exciting collection of poetry that at once delineates the arc of the poet's universe and highlights the range of his considerable talents.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCornelius Eady's poems show him in full control of his considerable talents and displaying a rich maturity as he enters midlife. His poems are sly, unsentimental, and witty, full of truths that are intimate and profound. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eHardheaded Weather\u003c\/i\u003e ranges widely, reflecting the new found responsibilities Eady has assumed as he transitions from urban renter to nonplussed rural homeowner, as well as the sobering influence of war and the intimation of his own mortality. Yet even at his angriest, the poet has always had a depth of compassion rare in our polarized age, with a sense of humor that is both sophisticated and demotic. These poems will resonate deeply. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs exciting as the new poems are, his selected earlier poems dazzle, too, as they demonstrate the arc of Cornelius Eady's maturation and the originality of his voice. Taken together, \u003ci\u003eHardheaded Weather\u003c\/i\u003e forms a moving--and sometimes searing--testament to the power of poetry.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0399155112\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780399155116\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Eady, Cornelius\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"G.P. Putnam's Sons","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Apr 2008)","offer_id":46099794755781,"sku":"9780399155116","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780399155116.jpg?v=1776644818"},{"product_id":"turn-where-a-geography-of-home","title":"Turn Where: A Geography of Home","description":"\u003cb\u003eA probing essay collection that chronicles one woman's complicated quest to find home in a fractured America, from the award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eField Study \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"In Chet'la Sebree's sensitive and tender hands, this book's quest (and question) of home is captivating. An intimate rendering of the life of a Black woman artist.\"--Imani Perry, National Book Award winner and author of \u003ci\u003eBlack in Blues\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAt eighteen, Chet'la Sebree began, as she writes, \"perfecting the art of leaving.\" After moving out of her parents' house in Delaware for college, the lauded poet, essayist, and academic rarely kept the same address for more than two years--bouncing from city to city, country to country, perpetually in search of her next adventure. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFor Sebree, traveling has been a life-long passion, forged during family road trips and vacations with friends; college study abroad programs in Europe; and far-flung writing residencies and job opportunities. She dreamed of one day taking her own Great American Road Trip, Jack Kerouac-style--except refashioned as a millennial Black woman who had also begun considering her next chapter: settling down and starting a solo fertility journey. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDuring the pandemic, Sebree thought she might finally get her chance to hit the road. But then, George Floyd was murdered, following the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey, and so many others. As America continued to reveal its most violent self, Sebree started to wrestle with the very idea of home: \u003ci\u003eWhere do I belong in a country not meant for people like me to survive? What does this mean for a child I might bring into it?\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eTurn (W)here\u003c\/i\u003e, Sebree turns to the page for answers, seamlessly weaving memoir with history and cultural criticism in a collection of inventive essays bound by themes of movement, home, inheritance, and belonging. Spanning continents, geographies, and states of mind, Sebree lights a pathway for the wanderer, the seeker--anyone propelled into the unknown by the desire for a place to truly belong.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 059359584X\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780593595848\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Sebree, Chet'la\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Dial Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Dial Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (May 2026)","offer_id":46291851870405,"sku":"9780593595848","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780593595848.jpg?v=1780113180"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/collections\/literary-criticism-african-american-black.oembed","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}