In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"-the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness-Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation. Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them. In the weather, Sharpe situates anti-Blackness and white supremacy as the total climate that produces premature Black death as normative. Formulating the wake and "wake work" as sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, In the Wake offers a way forward.

Marriage has been a contested term in African American studies. Contributors to this special issue address the subject of "black marriage," broadly conceived and imaginatively considered from different vantage points. Historically, some scholars have maintained that the systematic enslavement of Africans completely undermined and effectively destroyed the institutions of heteropatriarchal marriage and family, while others have insisted that slaves found creative ways to be together, love each other, and build enduring conjugal relationships and family networks in spite of forced separations, legal prohibitions against marriage, and other hardships of the plantation system. Still others have pointed out that not all African Americans were slaves and that free black men and women formed stable marriages, fashioned strong nuclear and extended families, and established thriving black communities in antebellum cities in both the North and the South. Against the backdrop of such scholarship, contributors look back to scholarly, legal, and literary treatments of the marriage question and address current concerns, from Beyonce's music and marriage to the issues of interracial coupling, marriage equality, and the much-discussed decline in African American marriage rates. Contributors: Ann duCille, Oneka LaBennett, Mignon Moore, Kevin Quashie, Renee Romano, Hortense Spillers, Kendall Thomas, Rebecca Wanzo, Patricia Williams

According to George Jackson, black men born in the US are conditioned to accept the inevitability of being imprisoned.... Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortune that led so many black men to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison. It required only minor psychic adjustments. As Jackson writes from his prison cell, his statement may seem to be only a product of his current status. However, history proves his point. Indeed, some of the most well-known and respected black men have served time in jail or prison. Among them are Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and Frederick Douglass. This book is an examination of the various forms that imprisonment, as asocial, historical, and political experience of African Americans, has taken. Confinement describes the status of individuals who are placed within boundaries either seen or unseen but always felt. A word that suggests extensive implications, confinement describes the status of persons who are imprisoned and who are unjustly relegated to a social status that is hostile, rendering them powerless and subject to the rules of the authorities. Arguably, confinement appropriately describes the status of African Americans who have endured spaces of confinement, which include, but are not limited to plantations, Jim Crow societies, and prisons. At specific times, these spaces of confinement have been used to oppress African Americans socially, politically, and spiritually. Contributors examine the related experiences of Malcolm X, Bigger Thomas of Native Son, and Angela Davis.

Deferred Dreams, Defiant Struggles interrogates Blackness and illustrates how it has been used as a basis to oppress, dismiss and exclude Blacks from societies and institutions in Europe, North America and South America. Employing uncharted analytical categories that tackle intriguing themes about borderless non-racial African ancestry, "traveling" identities and post-blackness, the essays provide new lenses for viewing the "Black" struggle worldwide. This approach directs the contributors' focus to understudied locations and protagonists. In the volume, Charleston, South Carolina is more prominent than Little Rock Arkansas in the struggle to desegregate schools; Chicago occupies the space usually reserved for Atlanta or other southern city "bulwarks" of the civil rights movement; diverse Africans in France and Afro-descended Chileans illustrate the many facets of negotiating belonging, long articulated by examples from the Greensboro Woolworth counter sit-in or the Montgomery Bus Boycott; unknown men in the British empire, who inverted dying confessions meant to vilify their blackness, demonstrate new dimensions in the story about race and religion, often told by examples of fiery clergy of the Black Church; and the theatres and studios of dramatists and visual artists replace the Mall in Washington DC as the stage for the performance of identities and activism.

South Africa's prosperity was built on the wealth dragged out of the ground by mine workers: the first volume of three runs up to the defeat of the mineworkers' strike in 1946 and the election of the first Nationalist Party government. Key Features include: Information on the early days of the industry from slavery to compound labour. Explanation of the coercive forces that drove workers to the mines and of the creation of a permanent supply of cheap black labour. Strikes and Protests from the 1920s to 1946

Using an intersectional approach, Marriage, Divorce, and Distress in Northeast Brazil explores rural, working-class, black Brazilian women's perceptions and experiences of courtship, marriage and divorce. In this book, women's narratives of marriage dissolution demonstrate the ways in which changing gender roles and marriage expectations associated with modernization and globalization influence the intimate lives and the health and well being of women in Northeast Brazil. Melanie A. Medeiros explores the women's rich stories of desire, love, respect, suffering, strength, and transformation.

This innovative book examines how African Americans in the South made sense of the devastating loss of life unleashed by the Civil War and emancipation. During and after the war, African Americans died in vast numbers from battle, disease, and racial violence. While freedom was a momentous event for the formerly enslaved, it was also deadly. Through an investigation into how African Americans reacted to and coped with the passing away of loved ones and community members, Ashley Towle argues that freedpeople gave credence to their free status through their experiences with mortality. African Americans harnessed the power of death in a variety of arenas, including within the walls of national and private civilian cemeteries, in applications for widows' pensions, in the pulpits of black churches, around seance tables, on the witness stand at congressional hearings, and in the columns of African American newspapers. In the process of mourning the demise of kith and kin, black people reconstituted their families, forged communal bonds, and staked claims to citizenship, civil rights, and racial justice from the federal government. In a society upended by civil war and emancipation, death was political.

Discussions surrounding the bias and discrimination against women in business have become paramount within the past few years. From wage gaps to a lack of female board members and leaders, various inequities have surfaced that are leading to calls for change. This is especially true of Black women in academia who constantly face the glass ceiling. The glass ceiling represents the metaphor for prejudice and discrimination that women may experience in the attainment of leadership positions. The glass ceiling is a barrier so subtle yet transparent and strong that it prevents women from moving up. There is a need to study the trajectory of Black females in academia specifically from faculty to leadership positions and their navigation of systemic roadblocks encountered along their quest to success. Black Female Leaders in Academia: Eliminating the Glass Ceiling With Efficacy, Exuberance, and Excellence features full-length chapters authored by leading experts offering an in-depth description of topics related to the trajectory of Black female leaders in higher education. It provides evidence-based practices to promote excellence among Black females in academic leadership positions. The book informs higher education top-level administration, policy experts, and aspiring leaders on how to best create, cultivate, and maintain a culture of Black female excellence in higher education settings. Covering topics such as barriers to career advancement, the power of transgression, and role stressors, this premier reference source is an essential resource for faculty and administrators of higher education, librarians, policymakers, students of higher education, researchers, and academicians.