Clarence Major is an award-winning painter, fiction writer, and poet—as well as an essayist, editor, anthologist, lexicographer, and memoirist. He has been part of twenty-eight group exhibitions, has had fifteen one-man shows, and has published fourteen collections of poetry and nine works of fiction. The Art and Life of Clarence Major is the first critical biography of this innovative African American writer and visual artist. Given the full cooperation of his subject, Keith E. B...

Challenging. Successful. Controversial. All terms used to accurately describe African American novelist and autobiographer John Edgar Wideman. This book examines his life and work—and the connections between them.The Life and Work of John Edgar Wideman is ideal for readers who might not be familiar with Wideman's work or those who may have been intimidated by descriptions of his writings. Through its coverage of Wideman's life from several generations back...

A finalist for the National Book Award in NonfictionA finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in NonfictionNamed a Best Book of 2023 by The New York Times, NPR, New York magazine, Kirkus, and Barnes and NobleThe critically acclaimed author of In the Wake, “Christina Sharpe is a brilliant thinker who attends unflinchingly to the brutality of our current arrangeme...

"Mind-opening, thought-provoking and incredibly timely… An absolutely spectacular read."—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoingA million listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the complexities of the modern media. Bursting onto the page in vivid comics by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld, this brilliant radio personality guides us through two millennia of media history, debunking the notion that "The Media" is an external force beyond our control and...

A dance critic's essays on post-modern dance.Drawing on the postmodern perspective and concerns that informed her groundbreaking Terpischore in Sneakers, Sally Bane's Writing Dancing documents the background and development of avant-garde and popular dance, analyzing individual artists, performances, and entire dance movements. With a sure grasp of shifting cultural dynamics, Banes shows how postmodern dance is integrally connected to other oppositional, often marg...

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author and poet comes a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America's unresolved problem with race.*Named a Most Anticipated Title of 2022 by TIME magazine, New York Times, Bustle, and more*In the midst of civil unrest in the summer of 2020 and following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Ar...

In Hold It Against Me, Jennifer Doyle explores the relationship between difficulty and emotion in contemporary art, treating emotion as an artist's medium. She encourages readers to examine the ways in which works of art challenge how we experience not only the artist's feelings, but our own. Discussing performance art, painting, and photography, Doyle provides new perspectives on artists including Ron Athey, Aliza Shvarts, Thomas Eakins, James Luna, Carrie Mae Weems, and David Wo...

Every reader can name at least one book that changed his or her life—and many more beloved titles will surely come to mind as well. In The Book That Changed My Life, fifteen of America’s most influential authors discuss their own special literary choices. These unique interviews with National Book Award winners and finalists offer new insights into the many ways in which the experience of reading shapes the act of writing. Robert Stone on Joseph Conrad’s Victory, Cynthia ...

**Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland PrizeA critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture**Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in i...

A singular achievement, Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes explores, with immense care, profound questions about loss, pain and beauty; private memory and public monument; art; complexity; and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 brief and urgent notes that cumulatively gather meaning, artifacts from the past – both public ones and the poignantly personal – are skilfully interwoven with present-day realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an i...

Published in 1982, But Some of Us Are Brave was the first-ever Black women's studies reader and a foundational text of contemporary feminism.Featuring writing from eminent scholars, activists, teachers, and writers, such as the Combahee River Collective and Alice Walker, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Bravechallenges the absence of Black feminist thought in women’s studies, confronts racism, and investigates th...

Carolyn Wilkins grew up defending her racial identity. Because of her light complexion and wavy hair, she spent years struggling to convince others that she was black. Her family’s prominence set Carolyn’s experiences even further apart from those of the average African American. Her father and uncle were well-known lawyers who had graduated from Harvard Law School. Another uncle had been a child prodigy and protégé of Albert Einstein. And her grandfather had been America's first black ass...