New Books In African American Studies

By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper moral response to this? Can prisons and the practices surrounding incarceration feasibly be reformed, or should the entire enterprise be abolished? If the latter, then what? If the former, what are the necessary reforms? In The Idea of Prison Abolition (Princeton UP, 2022), Tommie Shelby undertakes a systematic and critical examination of the arguments in favor of prison abolition. Although he ultimately rejects abolitionism as a philosophical position, he builds from the abolitionist program’s crucial insights a positive view of what it would take to create a prison and incarceration system that is consistent with justice. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african

The marginalisation of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pushing discipline, grown out of struggle and community action. In The Future of Black Studies (Pluto Press, 2022), Abdul Alkalimat, one of the founders of Black Studies in the US, presents a reimagining of the future trends in the study of the Black experience. Taking Marxism and Black Experientialism, Afro-Futurist and Diaspora frameworks, he projects a radical future for the discipline at this time of social crisis. Choosing cornerstones of culture, such as the music of Sun Ra, the movie Black Panther and the writer Octavia Butler, he looks at the trajectory of Black liberation thought since slavery, including new research on the rise in the comparative study of Black people all over the world. Turning to look at how digital tools enhance the study of the discipline, this book is a powerful read that will inform and inspire students and activists. Amanda Joyce

"History recalls Wallace’s inaugural address as a set piece in the larger drama of defending Southern segregation, which it was. But the speech was about something even more profound, more enduring, even more virulent than segregation. Aside from his infamous “Segregation Forever” slogan, Wallace mentioned “segregation” only one other time that afternoon. In contrast, he invoked “freedom” twenty-five times in his speech—more than Martin Luther King Jr. would use the term later that year in his “I Have a Dream” address at the March on Washington. “Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us,” Wallace told his audience, “and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South.” Those rattling shackles of oppression were forged by the enemy of the people of his beloved Barbour County: the federal government." – Jefferson Cowie, Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power (Basic Books, 2022). Professor Cowie titles his latest book’s introduction ‘George Walla

Pedro Lebrón Ortis's book The Philosophy of Marronage (Filosofía del cimarronaje) theorizes the broader context behind the notion of "cimarronaje," marronage. Usually conceived of as enslaved peoples' flight from the plantation during colonial times, cimarronaje is an expansive term referring to the mentality of living beyond oppressive societal norms. Lebrón Ortiz synthesizes philosophical notions behind cimarronaje to argue that we can see evidence of cimarronaje that continue today.  Other praise: "Comenzar por la experiencia de quienes no pueden librarse de nada –y mucho menos detener otra voluntad que no sea con los recursos de su propia fuerza– es partir de una experiencia totalmente distinta a la descrita habitualmente en los libros de filosofía política. Se trata de comenzar a pensar la libertad desde la perspectiva de quien experimenta el mundo como una molienda y del que no tiene más vínculos con el poder que una cita pautada con la muerte. Para el esclavizado, la libertad está en salir de esa condi

The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community. Today, fast food is disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods and marketed to Black Americans through targeted advertising. But throughout much of the twentieth century, fast food was developed specifically for White urban and suburban customers, purposefully avoiding Black spaces.  In White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation (U Minnesota Press, 2023), Naa Oyo A. Kwate traces the evolution in fast food from the early 1900s to the present, from its long history of racist exclusion to its current damaging embrace of urban Black communities. Fast food has historically been tied to the country's self-image as the land of opportunity and is marketed as one of life's simple pleasures, but a more insidious history lies at the industry's core. White Burgers, Black Cash investigates the complex trajectory of restaurant locations from a decided commitment to Whiteness to the di

Michael Ayers Trotti's The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion and Punishment in the American South (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022) documents the complex religious and cultural textures of post-Civil War executions in the U.S. South. Before 1850, all legal executions in the South were performed before crowds that could number in the thousands; the last legal public execution was in 1936. This study focuses on the shift from public executions to ones behind barriers, situating that change within our understandings of lynching and competing visions of justice and religion. Intended to shame and intimidate, public executions after the Civil War had quite a different effect on southern Black communities. Crowds typically consisting of as many Black people as white behaved like congregations before a macabre pulpit, led in prayer and song by a Black minister on the scaffold. Black criminals often proclaimed their innocence and almost always their salvation. This turned the proceedings into publi

In The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance (Temple University Press, 2015), Jacob Kramer examines how progressivism emerged at a time of critical transformation in American life. Kramer presents a study of Wilsonian-era politics to convey an understanding of the progressives’ views on radical America. Jacob Kramer is an Associate Professor of History at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was too weak to receive visitors, but cards and good wishes came from Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Anita Baker, Halle Berry, Patti LaBelle, Jesse Jackson, Burt Bacharach, Bette Midler, Star Jones, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick, among others. With a will to live matched only by the enormous strength and power of his heart, soul, and singing talent, Luther survived and is regaining his voice. Craig Seymour's Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross (2017) is a loving tribute to the man who has entertained millions. Luther remains one of the music industry's most private celebrities. In Luther, the first biography of the hugely popular and beloved singer, Craig Seymour investigates and illuminates Luther's life, from his early obsession with soulful girl groups to the day he was discovered by glam rocker David Bowie to his devastating stroke and inspiring r

Black women continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From grammar and high schools to corporate boardrooms and military squadrons, Black and Afro Latina natural hair continues to confound, transfix, and enrage members of White American society. Why, in 2022, is this still the case? Why have we not moved beyond that perennial racist emblem? And why are women so disproportionately affected? Why does our hair become most palatable when it capitulates, and has been subjugated, to resemble Caucasian features as closely as possible? Who or what is responsible for the web of supervision and surveillance of our hair? Who in our society gets to author the prevailing constitution of professional appearance? Particularly relevant during this time of emboldened White supremacy, racism, and provocative othering, Lyzette Wanzer's Trauma, Tresses, and Truth: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives (Chicago Review Press, 2022) explores how writing about one of the still-remaining syst

Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colonialism, and the African World (NYU Press, 2022) is a compelling history of understudied anti-colonial movements in this region, exploring how indigenous Oceanic activists intentionally forged international connections with the African world in their fights for liberation. Drawing from research conducted across Fiji, Australia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Britain, and the United States, Quito Swan shows how liberation struggles in Oceania actively engaged Black internationalism in their diverse battles against colonial rule. Pasifika Black features as its protagonists Oceania's many playwrights, organizers, religious leaders, scholars, Black Power advocates, musicians, environmental justice activists, feminists, and revolutionaries who carried the banners of Black liberation across the globe. It puts artists like Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal and her 1976 call

Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking, 2022) is American history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, who was at the forefront of the years-long fight to open the Air Force to Black pi

Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership (UP of Florida, 2022) examines a life of remarkable achievements and leadership in the desegregated South. Sonya Ramsey modernizes the nineteenth-century term "race woman" to describe how Maxwell-Roddey and her peers turned hard-won civil rights and feminist milestones into tangible accomplishments in North Carolina and nationwide from the late 1960s to the 1990s. Born in 1930, Maxwell-Roddey became one of Charlotte's first Black women principals of a white elementary school; she was the founding director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's Africana Studies Department; and she cofounded the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center, now the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture. Maxwell-Roddey founded the National Council for Black Studies, helping institutionalize the field with what is still its premier professional organization, and served as the 20th National President of Delta Sigma Theta S

Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism (NYU Press, 2022), Gregory Smithsimon shows us how this happened, and why it matters, unearthing the hidden role that suburbs played in establishing the Black middle-class. Focusing on Liberty Road, a Black middle-class suburb of Randallstown, Maryland, Smithsimon tells the remarkable story of how residents broke the color barrier, against all odds, in the face of racial discrimination, tensions with suburban Whites and urban Blacks, and economic crises like the mortgage meltdown of 2008. Drawing on interviews, census data, and archival research he shows us the unique strategies that suburban Black residents in Liberty Road employed, creating a blueprint for other Black middle-class suburbs. Brittney Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison. I specialize in 20th an

Philip Nanton's new book Riff: The Shake Keane Story (Papillote Press, 2022) follows the life and work of Shake Keane, the peripatetic and creative poet and musician from St. Vincent. Keane was an influential figure in the 1960s London jazz scene, worked briefly for the government on his home island, and moved to New York where he built lasting relationships, all the while creating an extensive discography and numerous publications. Nanton's considerations of Keane's contributions to freeform jazz as well as his innovative approach to poetry will inspire readers to seek out the sounds and words he left behind. Alejandra Bronfman is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Latin American, Caribbean & U.S. Latino Studies at SUNY, Albany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Autumn Womack is a professor of English and of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930 (University of Chicago Press, 2022), addresses scholars and readers interested in literary studies, visual culture, and transformative justice in modern America. The book also transcends these areas to speak to readers in science & technology studies, in history of technology, or broadly interested in science justice. The premise of the book is that America was living through two collective experiments as it suffered the aftermath of the failed Reconstruction following the US Civil War. The first was the experiment of Black freedom and the second was the experiment of new technologies to document (Black) life at a time when standards for how to use and to read their outputs were excitingly wide-open. In the hands of Black cultural producers, the yield of these technologies was “undisciplined data,” which pointed to the pos

Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South (Catholic University of America Press, 2022) discusses the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph of (the city of) St. Augustine, who came to Florida from France in 1866 to teach newly freed blacks after the Civil War, and remain to this day. It also tells the story of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia, who sprang from the motherhouse in St. Augustine. A significant part of the book is a comparison of the Sisters of St. Josephs’ work against that of their major rivals, missionaries from the Protestant American Missionary Association. Using letters the Sisters wrote back to their motherhouse in France, the book provides rare glimpses into the personal and professional (pun intended) lives of these women religious in St. Augustine and other parts of Florida and Georgia, from the mid-nineteenth century through the era of anti-Catholicism in the early twentieth century South. It carries the story through 1922, the end of the pioneer years

Virginia L. Summey's book The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores the life and contributions of groundbreaking attorney, Elreta Melton Alexander Ralston (1919–98). In 1945 Alexander became the first African American woman to graduate from Columbia Law School. In 1947 she was the first African American woman to practice law in the state of North Carolina, and in 1968 she became the first African American woman to become an elected district court judge. Despite her accomplishments, Alexander is little known to scholars outside of her hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. Her life and career deserve recognition, however, not just because of her impressive lists of “firsts,” but also owing to her accomplishments during the civil rights movement in the U.S. South. While Alexander did not actively participate in civil rights marches and demonstrations, she used her professional achievements and middle-class status to advocate for individuals who lacked a vo

Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society (U Georgia Press, 2022) asserts that anti-Black racism is not better than it used to be; it is just performed in more-nuanced ways. Barbara Harris Combs argues that racism is dynamic, so new theories are needed to help expose it. The Bodies-out-of-Place (BOP) theory she advances in the book offers such a corrective lens. Interrogating several recent racialized events—the Central Park birding incident, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, sleeping while Black occurrences, and others—Combs demonstrates how the underlying belief that undergirds each encounter is a false presumption that Black bodies in certain contexts are out of place. Within these examples she illustrates how, even amid professions to color-blindness, fixed attitudes about where Black bodies belong, in what positions, at what time, and with whom still predominate. Combs describes a long historical pattern of White pushback against Black advancement and illuminates how each of the various

The writer and activist James Baldwin grew up in a majority white America that saw white American lives as standard and universal, and Black American lives as different and particular. But in his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, Baldwin showed that his life as a Black man in America was universally human. Josef Sorett is the Professor of Religion and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. He is also chair of the Department of Religion and directs the Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice. He is the author of Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Contemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of this contradiction of culture and history, Afro-Swedes have emerged as a vibrant demographic presence, from generations of diasporic movement, migration, and homemaking. In Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Ryan Thomas Skinner uses oral histories, archival research, ethnography, and textual analysis to explore the history and culture of this diverse and growing Afro-European community. Skinner employs the conceptual themes of "remembering" and "renaissance" to illuminate the history and culture of the Afro-Swedish community, drawing on the rich theoretical traditions of the African and Black diaspora. Remembering fosters a sustained meditation on Afro-Swedish social history, while Renaissance indexes a thriving Afro-Swedish public culture. Together, these concepts illuminate significant existential modes of Afro-Swe