Customer Reviews (1)

AFRO-AMERICAS FORGOTTEN PAST
Over the past thirty years Black or African-American history has been on the cutting edge of research, and a popular offering in secondary schools and especially in colleges and universities.Not unexpectedly, many have sought to capitalize on this new-found interest in what educators call "multiculturalism" by "rushing-to-judgment," by making available to students, specialists,and the general public,works catering to this interest. Many (nearly all) of these works, written by "celebrity scholars" like Cornell West, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Roger Wilkins, Beverly D. Tatum--the list is seemilngly endless--are devoid of dispassionate scholarship.Indeed, it is not too much to say these "works" are opportunistic ramblings of race hustlers who are incapable of distinguishing blatant racial advocacy from serious, evidentiary-based, scholarship.
How refreshing, then, to come upon a work like that of Professor George Levesque's.This beautifully written, meticulously researched book, while it focuses on a single state and its capital city (Boston Massachusetts)informs about the origins of Black life and culture of non-slave Blacks in general in the crucial years before the general emancipation brought about by the Civil War. As the late William G. McLoughliln of Brown University wrote on the dust jacket, "Boston has had many interpreters but few have written about this quintessential American city as has Levesque in this incomparable book; by far the best we have on black life in urban America before the Civil War.Solidly grounded in primary sources, brilliant in its multifaceted analysis, this Big Book returns black history to the forefront of historical achievement."
Perhaps most revealing about this big book (it is more than 500 pages in length,)is the author's erudition on such a wide range of topics.The work on the demographic landscape alone is remarkable.We learn not only about the origins and growth of Boston's black community, including its age and sex ratios, statistics on reported crime, pauperism and insanity; emploument figures, school and church membership rolls, but on a host of associational and institutional aspects as well as the band of incomparable leaders, men and women both, who led this community in the pivotal transition years between the Revolution and the Civil War.One cannot capture in a brief review the rich tapestry woven by this author, a tapestry which enlightens on every subject examined; an example of social history at its very best, and one which informs on a subject which should be of interest to us all: the origns of our enduring and perplexing racial dilemma. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first comprehensive historical analysis of how black music and musicians have been represented in the fiction of African American writers. It also examines how music and musicians in fiction have exemplified the sensibilities of African Americans and provided paradigms for an African American literary tradition.
The fictional representation of African American music by black authors is traced from the nineteenth century (William Wells Brown, Martin Delany, Pauline E. Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar) through the early twentieth century and the Harlem Renaissance (James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston) to the 1940s and 50s (Richard Wright, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison) and the 1960s and the Black Arts Movement (Margaret Walker, William Melvin Kelley, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Henry Dumas). In the century between Brown and Baraka, the representation of music in black fiction went through a dramatic metamorphosis. Music occupied a representative role in African American culture from which writers drew ideas and inspiration. The music provided a way out of a limited situation by offering a viable option to the strictures of racism. Individuals who overcome these limitations then become role models in the struggle toward equality. African American musical forms-for both artist and audience-also offerd a way of looking at the world, survival, and resistance. The black musician became a ritual leader. This study delineates how black writers have captured the spirit of the music that played such a pivotal role inAfrican American culture. (Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1993; revised with new preface and index) ... Read more

Product Description
While chronicling the development of Teer's National Black Theatre of Harlem, this study explores the National Black Theatre's quest to develop a new black theory of acting. Teer's theory of performance was realized in a theater that combined elements of Pentacostal worship and African ritual, melding spontaneity from the performers, percussive music, singing, dancing, emotional expression from both actors and audience, and spectacle. The National Black Theatre's major achievement is the creation of an original art form that helps African Americans identify with their roots and invites spontaneous audience interaction. The study offers the National Black Theatre as a model African American community theater with valuable lessons for other theaters. The innovative methods of the National Black Theatre provide a model for enlightening and sensitizing audiences to cultural diversity. A pioneering institution, the National Black Theatre has proven itself over its 25 year history to be a cultural treasure and the quintessential theater in Harlem.(Bibliography, and index; foreword by Dr. Winona Fletcher, Professor Emeritus of Theater and Drama and Afro-American Studies; Founder of the National Black Theatre) ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines the ways in which race and gender have shaped and continue to inform African American literature. African American texts create a black literary and cultural identity interpreting and recording the survival of their cultures shattered by years of slavery.Black women writers, who have to deal with both racism and sexism, use additional strategies to undo this double reduction. They strive to invent a new language to talk about their experience and their lives as black and as women. After a typology of the African American text, the book proposes a reading of major African American writers including Phyllis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Charles Chesnutt, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The African Difference: Discourses on Africanity and the Relativity of Cultures, by Oyekan Owomoyela.
Exactly the kind of information I was looking for. A fair overview across language barriers and by Africans themselves dealing with tricky isues like Africanity and Africanism, human rights, civil behaviour, traditionalism and modernism, and how to view at relativism of cultures in this context. A rich source of information and food for thought for any serious student on Africa. ... Read more

Product Description
A study of both the legislation pertaining to runaway slaves and the individual slave uncovers some previously ignored issues from a legal standpoint, and also highlights the efforts made by slaves in the 18th century to confront these controls. The profile presents new research on the legal settin ... Read more

Product Description
A revised version of the author's 1981 history dissertationcovering Garnet's life from slave at birth to abolitionist,activist, minister, educator, and diplomat. His "Address tothe Slaves of the United States" (1843) served as a model for future black militancy. Seen by some as a violent revolut ... Read more

Product Description

*Finalist for the 2007 Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).*

Product Description
Frederick Douglass' Leadershop role in the anit-slavery struggle is well known.Even so, much about his life and his role in the black liberation movement is unknown.Wu Jin-Ping reevaluates Douglass' place in the history of the black liberation movement, paying particular attention to Doublass' impact on other black leaders, and to Douglass' Legitimate Reform Strategy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Jin-Ping makes a vibrant contribution to Douglass scholarshi
This text was useful to me in my recent research on the relationship between the U.S. Constitution and slavery from 1842-1861.It is certainly not the most thorough or detailed analysis of Douglass' life, especially when one considers that Douglass wrote more in-depth accounts of his own life than any future scholar would.However, it is quite useful in that it aptly catalogues the political shifts which Douglass underwent in his life and the impact of his ideas on American and European society.
Jin-Ping's text narrates Douglass' shift from radical, anti-constitutional abolitionist to Lincoln supporter adeptly.Douglass' activism was particularly important in that he was the most prominent anti-slavery orator who actually experienced slavery, and that he always walked a fine line between simple anti-slavery spokesman and revolutionary.If you are looking for an in-depth account of Douglass' life, read one of his autobiographies.However, if you are looking for a fascinating analysis of his politics and its impact, Jin-Ping's work will suit you well. ... Read more

Product Description

During the early years of the motion picture industry, black performers were often depicted as shuckin’ and jivin’ caricatures. Specifically, black males were portrayed as toms, coons and bucks, while the mammy and tragic mulatto archetypes circumscribed black femininity. This misrepresentation began to change in the 1950s and 1960s when performers such as Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier were cast in more positive roles. These performers paved the way for the black exploitation or blaxploitation movement, which began in 1970 and flourished until 1975. The movement is characterized by films that feature a black hero or heroine, black supporting characters, a predominately black urban setting, a display of black sexuality, excessive violence, and a contemporary rhythm and blues soundtrack. Blaxploitation films were made across varying genres, but the questionable elements of some of the pictures caused them to be referred to as "blaxploitation" films with little or no regard given to their generic categorization. This book examines how Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Blacula (1972), The Mack (1973), and Cleopatra Jones (1973) can be classified within the detective, horror, gangster, and cop action genres, respectively, and illustrates the manner in which the inclusion of "blackness" represents a significant revision to the aforementioned genres.

Product Description
Is knowledge power? In Teach the Nation, Anne-Elizabeth Murdy explores the history and contradictions in the notion that education and literacy are vital means for improving social and political status in the US.

By closely examining the rapidly shifting social context of education, and the emerging literature by and for African-American women during the 1890s, Murdy proves that the histories of education and literature are deeply connected and argues that their current lives must be regarded as mutually dependent.

Teach the Nation offers a new understanding of literacy and pedagogical study and identifies how literary history enhances current feminist and anti-racist teachings. By excavating notions about education in the 1890s-as turbulent a time for American public education as today-Murdy asks readers to step back from this historical moment to better understand the contexts and institutions within which we theorize learning and teaching. In doing so, she compels readers to reimagine the potential for gaining social power through education and literature. ... Read more