Who's Black and Why? by
"A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism." --Publishers Weekly "The eighteenth-century essays published for the first time in Who's Black and Why? contain a world of ideas--theories, inventions, and fantasies--about what blackness is, and what it means. To read them is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity." --Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin--an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism. In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of "blackness." What is the physical cause of blackness and African hair, and what is the cause of Black degeneration, the contest announcement asked. Sixteen essays, written in French and Latin, were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe. The authors ranged from naturalists to physicians, theologians to amateur savants. Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why. Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic by the time the contest was announced. The essays themselves represent a broad range of opinions. Some affirm that Africans had fallen from God's grace; others that blackness had resulted from a brutal climate; still others emphasized the anatomical specificity of Africans. All the submissions nonetheless circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable record of the Enlightenment-era thinking that normalized the sale and enslavement of Black human beings. These never previously published documents survived the centuries tucked away in Bordeaux's municipal library. Translated into English and accompanied by a detailed introduction and headnotes written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew Curran, each essay included in this volume lays bare the origins of anti-Black racism and colorism in the West.
We Testify with Our Lives by
Police killings of unarmed Black people have ignited a national and international response unlike any in decades. But differing from their civil rights-oriented predecessors, today's activists do not think that the institutions and values of liberal democracy can eradicate structural racism. They draw instead on a Black radical tradition that, Terrence L. Johnson argues, derives its force from its unacknowledged ethical and religious dimensions. We Testify with Our Lives traces Black religion's sustained influence from SNCC to the present, reconstructing a radical lived ethics of freedom and justice. Johnson demonstrates that Black Power fundamentally contests liberalism's abstract understanding of democracy, calling instead for new embodied frameworks to achieve human flourishing and dignity. Black bodies represent the primary form of resistance against violent and oppressive regimes of white supremacy and exploitation, and the individual and collective struggles of Black life bear witness to the dogged determination to cultivate beauty, rage, and joy. Considering the writings of Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, We Testify with Our Lives makes its case through a new narrative of the evolution of Black radicalism from the civil rights movement through the Movement for Black Lives. It forges new insights into Black Power's vital contributions to debates on ethics, transnational politics, democracy, political solidarity, and freedom--and its potent resources for the ongoing struggle to build democratic possibilities for all.
Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women by
Despite recent advances in the study of black thought, black women intellectuals remain often neglected. This collection of essays by fifteen scholars of history and literature establishes black women's places in intellectual history by engaging the work of writers, educators, activists, religious leaders, and social reformers in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. Dedicated to recovering the contributions of thinkers marginalized by both their race and their gender, these essays uncover the work of unconventional intellectuals, both formally educated and self-taught, and explore the broad community of ideas in which their work participated. The end result is a field-defining and innovative volume that addresses topics ranging from religion and slavery to the politicized and gendered reappraisal of the black female body in contemporary culture. Contributors are Mia E. Bay, Judith Byfield, Alexandra Cornelius, Thadious Davis, Corinne T. Field, Arlette Frund, Kaiama L. Glover, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, Natasha Lightfoot, Sherie Randolph, Barbara D. Savage, Jon Sensbach, Maboula Soumahoro, and Cheryl Wall.
Remembering Slavery by
When Remembering Slavery was first published 15 years ago, this startling (and bestselling) first-person account of slavery was heralded as powerful and intense' (Atlanta Journal Constitution) and 'invaluable' (Chicago Tribune). Drawing from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writers' Project, this astonishing collection makes available the only known recordings of people who lived through the enormity of slavery.'
Rap on Trial by
In 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many across the US. Rap on Trial places this disturbing prosecutorial practice in the context of hip-hop history and exposes what's at stake. It's a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip-hop and mass incarceration.
Because AABS is an interdisciplinary field, there won't be one section of the library's shelves you can visit to find all of the AABS books. You will find them throughout our book stacks depending on the lens through which the book is written, for example, history, psychology, sociology, fine arts, communication, etc.
Looking for books? Use OneSearch to find books we have here in the library and online. Most of our physical books are located on the main floor of the Mt. SAC library. FAQs
Note: This list is not exhaustive but is intended as a helpful finding aid. Affiliations are taken from descriptions written by the authors themselves or their own publicity materials, when possible. Some authors write both fiction and non-fiction, but were only included in one list--either the genre the Mt. SAC library owned of their work in or their primary writing style.
Note: This list is not exhaustive but is intended as a helpful finding aid. Affiliations are taken from descriptions written by the authors themselves or their own publicity materials, when possible. Some authors write both fiction and non-fiction, but were only included in one list--either the genre the Mt. SAC library owned of their work in or their primary writing style.
