WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTIONINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel WilkersonAn essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revela...

A “vast, multifaceted and enchanting” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture, from National Book Award winner Imani Perry, “the most important interpreter of Black life in our time” (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.)Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hop...

James 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.Available for the first time in a stand-alone edition, Nothing Personal 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 supr...

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyWinner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ NonfictionWinner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian NonfictionWinner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award**A New York Times Notable Book of 2018A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet least understood, Black artist...

2020 Chautauqua Prize Finalist2020 NAACP Image Award Nominee - Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)Best-of Lists: Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 (Kirkus Reviews) · 25 Can't-Miss Books of 2019 (The Undefeated)Explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world....

A collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan’s multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.Featuring a foreword by Alexis Pauline...

GMA**’s 15 Spectacular New Books to Read in September**Ms. Magazine**’s September 2023 Reads for the Rest of Us****The Millions “Most Anticipated” Books of 2023LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black femin...

At once the most lucrative, popular, and culturally oppositional musical force in the United States, hip hop demands the kind of interpretation Imani Perry provides here: criticism engaged with this vibrant musical form on its own terms. A scholar and a fan, Perry considers the art, politics, and culture of hip hop through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood. Recognizing prevailing characterizations of hip hop as a transnational musical form, Perry advances a ...

In her first book for young readers, National Book Award winner Imani Perry chronicles the history of schools and education in Black America.After emancipation, freed people of all ages wanted to go to school. From the story of John McCline, who learned to read as a boy serving in the Union Army, through the teachers who built one-room schoolhouses across the rural South during Reconstruction to the student-led movement to desegregate schools during the Civil Right...

Peter H. Wood’s groundbreaking history of Blacks in colonial South Carolina, with a new foreword by National Book Award winner Imani Perry.First published in 1974, Black Majority marked a breakthrough in our understanding of early American history. Today, Wood’s insightful study remains more relevant and enlightening than ever. This landmark book chronicles the crucial formative years of North America’s wealthiest and most tormented British colony. It expl...

Since 2012, Public Books has championed a new kind of community for intellectual engagement, discussion, and action. An online magazine that unites the best of the university with the openness of the internet, Public Books is where new ideas are debuted, old facts revived, and dangerous illusions dismantled. Here, young scholars present fresh thinking to audiences outside the academy, accomplished authors weigh in on timely issues, and a wide range of readers encounter th...

An immersive multigenerational memoir that recounts the hopes, injustices, and triumphs of a Black family fighting for access to the American dream in the twentieth century.The late Chicagoan George Nesbitt could perhaps best be described as an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift for storytelling. In his newly uncovered memoir—written fifty years ago, yet never published—he chronicles in vivid and captivating detail the story of how his upwardly mobile Midweste...