For many inside and outside the legal academy, the right place to look for law is in constitutions, statutes, and judicial opinions. This book looks for law in the “wrong places”—sites and spaces in which no formal law appears. These may be geographic regions beyond the reach of law, everyday practices ungoverned or ungovernable by law, or works of art that have escaped law’s constraints.Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places brings together essays by leading scholars of ...

A richly nuanced cultural history of an enigmatic and controversial folktalePerhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced in many other places throughout the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. ...

The Wild Tchoupitoulas is a definitive expression of the modern New Orleans sound. From "Hey Pocky A-Way" to "Big Chief Got a Golden Crown," the album draws on carnival traditions stretching back a century, adapting songs from the Mardi Gras Indians. Music chanted in the streets with tambourines and makeshift percussion is transformed throughout the album into electric rhythm and blues accented funk, calypso, and reggae. The album bridges not only genres but generations, linking t...

In light of accumulating significant debts, Arthur Shelby, a farmer from Kentucky, finds himself on the verge of losing his entire estate. Despite his and his wife's compassionate treatment of their slaves, Shelby is compelled to sell two of them to Mr. Haley, a rugged slave trader, to raise the necessary funds. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a timeless masterpiece that showcases the harsh realities of slavery. Published in 1852, it served as a catalyst for social change, igniting the aboli...

Heart of Darkness is a novella (published in 1902) by Joseph Conrad. Before publication, it appeared in a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine (1899). This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame tale, following a man named Charlie Marlow as he recounts his adventure to a group of men on a ship at dusk and continuing into the evening. It details an incident earlier in Marlow's life, a journey on what readers can assume is the Congo River (although the name o...

I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. My father was a carpenter, and considered so intelligent and skilful in his trade, that, when buildings out of the common line were to be erected, he was sent for from long distances, to be head workman. On condition of paying his mistress two hundred dollars a year, and supporting himself, he was allowed to work at his trade, and manage his own affairs. His strongest wish was to purchase his childre...

First published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is an American classic of race, culture and education at the turn of the twentieth century. The book contains several essays on race, some of which had been previously published in a magazine called, Atlantic Monthly.This book comprises fourteen essays written between 1897 and 1903 that range across social, political and economic history, religion and education, psychology, the sociology of music, autobiography and fiction.Thro...

There is a commonly held belief the tropical storms and hurricanes that form off the coast of West Africa are not natural disasters, but rather they are retaliation by restless spirits impacted by one of the darkest chapters of world history—the trans-Atlantic slave trade.Awiti’s destiny was forever changed the day the slave raiders arrived at her village. She made a life-altering decision with the hope of being reunited with her family, only to discover her effort was in vain. For...

A new edition published on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Baldwin’s death, including a new introduction by an important contemporary writerSince its original publication in 1955, this first nonfiction collection of essays by James Baldwin remains an American classic. His impassioned essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written.“A straight-from-the-shoulder writer, wr...

“The Origin of Others combines Toni Morrison’s accustomed eloquence with meaning for our times as citizens of the world.” —Nell Irvin Painter, New RepublicAmerica’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Other...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s original, groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, and particularly the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey whose myths help art...

A collection of James Baldwin's writings that speaks urgently to our current era of racial injustice, with an introduction by prominent Baldwin scholar Rich BlintIn his unforgettable, incandescent essays and poetry, James Baldwin diagnosed the racial injustices of the twentieth century and illuminated the struggles and triumphs of African Americans. Now, in our current age of persistent racial injustice and the renewed spirit of activism represented by the Black Li...