Mothering is a central issue for feminist theory, and motherhood is also a persistent presence in the work of Toni Morrison. Examining Morrison's novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea O'Reilly illustrates how Morrison builds upon black women's experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from motherhood as practiced and prescribed in the dominant culture. Motherhood, in Morrison's view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance, essential and integral to black women's fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well-being for themselves and their culture. The power of motherhood and the empowerment of mothering are what make possible the better world we seek for ourselves and for our children. This, argues O'Reilly, is Morrison's maternal theory--a politics of the heart.

His Birthright His Birthright to Love be Loved to be Respectable be Respected to be a Leader to Lead to have a Home a World to be a Man a Blackman to seek his Deity and to know his God All Lost Before His Birth, Right D. Fu-Ski

Nicolas Guillen and Aime Cesaire are considered by many critics and literary historians to be the foremost Caribbean poets of the 20th century, yet they are rarely treated together. This work deals with the two writers within a comparative framework, exploring their poetry as the exemplification of Negritude art and writing from the Caribbean. Josaphat Kubayanda uses non-canonical theories of literary and cultural analysis to discuss the relationships between creative writing, the idea of Africa, and the rediscovery of African values in the Caribbean, and to propose and demonstrate an original Caribbean poetics, anchored in Africa's cultural systems and linked to Afro-American protest thought. Each of the book's chapters focuses on an aspect of the literary development of the African heritage and of the black condition illustrated by Guillen and Cesaire. Chapter 1 offers an introduction to the genesis of Caribbean rhetorical interest in Africa, from the 1920s onward, and places Guillen and Cesaire in the context of Negritude. Chapter 2 addresses the European othering of Africa, and the Negritude critique of this within the non-African traditions. Guillen's and Cesaire's response to the European concept of the universal is discussed in chapter 3, while chapter 4 demonstrates the ways in which blackness is caught between racial otherness and trying to integrate into the Caribbean social order. The final two chapters provide an analysis of the polyrhythmic unity of the African cultural system that allows Guillen and Cesaire to make technical innovations, and a conclusion acknowledges the writers' place in Caribbean creative writing. The volume also contains an updated bibliography on Caribbean literature and the African element. This work will be a valuable reference source for courses in Caribbean and African literary studies, Latin American literature, and Afro-American and African culture, and an important addition to both public and academic libraries.

A surge of African American enrolment and student activism brought Black Studies to many US campuses in the 1960s. Sixty years later, Black Studies programmes are taught at more than 1,300 universities worldwide. This book is the first history of how that happened. Black Studies founder and movement veteran Abdul Alkalimat offers a comprehensive history of the discipline that will become a key reference for generations to come. Structured in three broadly chronological sections - Black Studies as intellectual history; as social movement; and as academic profession - the book demonstrates how Black people themselves established the field long before its institutionalisation in university programmes. At its heart, Black Studies is profoundly political. Black Power, the New Communist Movement, the Black women's and students' movements - each step in the journey for Black liberation influenced and was influenced by this revolutionary discipline.

Women of Color and Social Media Multitasking: Blogs, Timelines, Feeds, and Community explores and critically analyzes the motivations and uses of social media by women of color. This edited collection seeks to determine how, and why, women of color make strategic use of social media as a social, professional, personal, and political tool for navigating the world. The contributors uniquely address the motivations and pathways for establishing virtual communities by, and for, women of color. Women of Color and Social Media Multitasking contributes to dialogues concerning gender, race, class, sexuality, politics, and uses of social media.

Black Participatory Research explores research partnerships that disrupt inequality, create change, and empower racially marginalized communities. Through presenting a series of co-reflections from professional and community researchers in different locations, this book explores the conflicts and tensions that emerge when professional interests, class and socio-economic statuses, age, geography, and cultural and language differences emerge alongside racial identity as central ways of seeing and being ourselves. Through the investigations of black researchers who collaborated in participatory research projects in post-Katrina New Orleans, USA the greater Philadelphia-New Jersey-Delaware region in the northeastern USA, and Senegal, West Africa, this book offers candid reflections of how shared identity, experiences, and differences shape the nature and process of participatory research.

Inspired by the O.J. Simpson case, Protecting Our Own explores the reasons behind the rise of the "black protectionism" phenomenon and its implications for the future. Comparing the plight of the African American community to the melancholy lyrics but vibrant beat of the blues, Russell-Brown uses the lyrics of these songs to paint a vivid picture of the African American community struggling through the burdens of racial oppression such as second tier status and lynchings solely due to the color of their skins. Russell-Brown explains the feelings of protectionism towards African American celebrities, as many African Americans feel that they have to "protect their own" because no one else will. Many African Americans, Russell-Brown argues, feel that African American are still under siege and that the few lucky African Americans who find a way into the spotlight deserve a break. However, with more and more African Americans in the spotlight, this practice has new consequences. Protecting Our Own considers these issues in detail. The book sets out to accomplish three goals: to define Black protectionism, to explain how it works and how it can be reformulated to work in the best interests of the African American community. The book uses cases such as the infamous O.J. Simpson case to illustrate and explain the motivations behind black protectionism, even if the defendant is accused of grievous moral and ethical wrongdoing. Russell-Brown criticizes the use of black protectionism as a knee jerk reaction and expresses the need to hold African American celebrities accountable for their misdeeds. She suggests a selective approach to black protectionism that will benefit the African American community at large rather than just a lucky few. This book praises black protectionism at its best-a fight that will ensure racial justice in the future.

Reena wants to be a star...
...A Bollywood star. Unfortunately, her family won't stand for it. It doesn't help that Reena is only eight-years-old. However, a beacon of hope arrives in the form of Uncle Jessi. He's just emigrated from India to America, and is a welcome addition to her family household. Uncle Jessi and Reena share a special bond. Not only are they old pen pals, but he recognizes her desperation to become a Bollywood actress.
One day, Uncle Jessi plans a secret surprise. He invites her to take part in a pretend acting game. Reena jumps at the chance. At first, she enjoys swinging her hips to Bollywood beats. She smiles brightly at his camera. However, halfway through her performance matters take an unexpected turn. The end results surprise both Reena and Uncle Jessi.
Important lessons come through an action-driven story and beautiful illustrations:
Children will learn that sexual abuse is NEVER their fault.Parents and children will be given a launching pad to discuss the warning signs of "grooming."Children will come away knowing they have the power to say: "NO."Children will discover that sexual abuse can occur in any cultural group.Children can be assured that they will be believed when reporting inappropriate behavior.Therapists and parents can exhibit that sexual abuse isn't an off-limits topic.Child abuse survivors will come away knowing they are not alone.
Therapists' Acclaim for "Reena's Bollywood Dream"
""Reena's Bollywood Dream" is exceptionally well-written. It works as an educational piece to foster awareness to children and their families regarding the realities of sexual abuse within the South Asian community. This informative book can help alter a child's life for the better."
--Sadia Khaliq, B.A., B.S.W., M.S.W., Community Treatment Coordinator, Centre for Addictionand Mental Health
"With a captivating story and beautiful illustration, and with a message that is cross-cultural and educational, Reena's Bollywood Dream can help children understand the sad reality that there are those who can hurt them but there is also means of staying safe--with others' help. I recommend this book highly to all families; it can be instrumental to starting a conversation about a difficult topic."
--Pamela Pine, PhD, MPH, Founder and CEO, Stop the Silence
For more info see www.JewelKats.com
Juvenile Fiction: Social Issues - Sexual Abuse
Family & Relationships: Abuse - Child Abuse
Social Science: Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies

The African has been separated from his Black American brothers and sisters since the dawn of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Millions of Africans were forcibly ejected from their native soil, separated from their loved ones-their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and torn from the lives they once knew, and transplanted into a new world. Essentially, the black American has become a new person in a new world with a unique experience. After hundreds of years in the new world, coupled with their unique experience; how do they view, or see, or relate or perceive or better yet interact with their African kith and kin they left on the African continent, who are now 'voluntarily' joining them in America in exodus proportions fleeing the life of grinding poverty, deprivation, hunger, dictatorships, helplessness, and all kinds of diseases? The authors spent more than twenty five years trying to find out answers to these questions.

"This colection brings together two generations of scholarship on many important topics in African-American religious history. . . . A useful and judiciously chosen compilation that should serve well in the classroom."
-- "Religious Studies Review"

"It serves as a smorgasbord of the study of black spirituality."
-- "Black Issues Book Review"

Down by the Riverside provides an expansive introduction to the development of African American religion and theology. Spanning the time of slavery up to the present, the volume moves beyond Protestant Christianity to address a broad diversity of African American religion from Conjure, Orisa, and Black Judaism to Islam, African American Catholicism, and humanism.

This accessible historical overview begins with African religious heritages and traces the transition to various forms of Christianity, as well as the maintenance of African and Islamic traditions in antebellum America. Preeminent contributors include Charles Long, Gayraud Wilmore, Albert Raboteau, Manning Marable, M. Shawn Copeland, Vincent Harding, Mary Sawyer, Toinette Eugene, Anthony Pinn, and C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya. They consider the varieties of religious expression emerging from migration from the rural South to urban areas, African American women's participation in Christian missions, Black religious nationalism, and the development of Black Theology from its nineteenth-century precursors to its formulation by James Cone and later articulations by black feminist and womanist theologians. They also draw on case studies to provide a profile of the Black Christian church today.

This thematic history of the unfolding of religious life in AfricanAmerica provides a window onto a rich array of African American people, practices, and theological positions.

In "The Last Crusade, " Gerald McKnight examines the Poor People's Campaign, the last large-scale demonstration of civil rights-era America, and the systematic efforts of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his executive officers to subvert King's ambitious effort to force the federal government to live up to its promises of a Great Society. The book also looks at King's last days as he helped Memphis sanitation workers in their labor-cum-civil rights struggle with a recalcitrant and racist city government. Although there is no persuasive evidence that the FBI and the Memphis police conspired to assassinate King, McKnight marshals evidence to show that neither agency was blameless.The conventional view of the Poor People's Campaign is that it was a self-inflicted failure. The blame rested squarely on the shoulders of the second-raters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who failed to fill the leadership vacuum after King's assassination. But, as McKnight shows, there was a hidden, dark counterpoint to the accepted version--namely, the triumph of the 1960s American surveillance state and its repressive power and flagrant violation of protected freedoms. In fact, whatever the FBI wanted to do to disrupt the Campaign, it did, aided and abetted by local police agencies and elements of the federal government, including military intelligence.

In this first full-length study of Emecheta's fiction, Fishburn highlights the difficulties inherent in reading across cultures. She challenges the notion that all we need to understand African texts is a willingness to be open to them, arguing that too many of the cultural and critical preconceptions we bring to these texts interfere with our ability to understand them. Directly responding to Western feminist criticism written about Emecheta, this study argues that Emecheta herself is not a feminist in the Western sense and that her novels should not be construed as reflecting this political interest. In close readings of eight of her best known works, this study reveals a complex narrative voice which is far more supportive of Emecheta's own African culture and its tradition than has been recognized previously.

The resilient people who lived in these neighborhoods established strong businesses, raised churches, created vibrant entertainment spots and forged bonds among family and friends for mutual well-being. After integration, the neighborhoods eventually gave way to decay and urban renewal, and tales of unquenchable spirit in the face of adversity began to fade.

In this companion volume to "St. Petersburg's Historic 22nd Street South," Rosalie Peck and Jon Wilson share stories of people who built these thriving communities, and offer a rich narrative of hardships overcome, leaders who emerged and the perseverance of pioneers who kept the faith that a better day would arrive.

"Thoughtful, provocative . . . a first-rate study."
--"Library Journal"

"Not the least of this book's many virtues is the way in which . . . it bridges the gap between the concern's of Du Bois's day and those of the civil rights era."
--Times Literary Supplement

"A rich and moving account of the complex life of one of the most influential black figures in twentieth-century America."
"aHerbert Hill, Evjue-Bascom Professor of African-American Studies, University of Wisconsin"

"We need this book to remind us of the competent leadership that we enjoyed in the past."
--"Black Issues Book Review"

"This work is a welcome addition to African American studies as well as to social and cultural history..."
--"Choice"

Activist, international statesman, reluctant black leader, scholar, icon, father and husband, Ralph Bunche is one of the most complicated and fascinating figures in the history of twentieth- century America. Bunche played a central role in shaping international relations from the 1940s through the 1960s, first as chief of the Africa section of the Office of Strategic Services and then as part of the State Department group working to establish the United Nations. After moving to the U.N. as Director of Trusteeship, he became the first black Nobel Laureate in 1950 and was subsequently named Undersecretary of the U.N.

For nearly a decade, he was the most celebrated contemporary African American both domestically and abroad. Today he is virtually forgotten.

Charles Henry's penetrating biography counters this historical tragedy, recapturing the essence of Bunche's service to America and the world. Moreover, Henry ably demonstrates how Bunche's riseand fall as a public symbol tells us as much about America as it does about Bunche. His iconic status, like that of other prominent, mainstream black figures like Colin Powell, required a constant struggle over the relative importance of his racial identity and his national identity. Henry's biography shines as both the recovered story of a classic American, and as a case study in the racial politics of public service.

White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-racism powerfully emphasizes the significance of humility, vulnerability, anxiety, questions of complicity, and how being a "good white" is implicated in racial injustice. This collection sets a new precedent for critical race scholarship and critical whiteness studies to take into consideration what it means specifically to be a white problem rather than simply restrict scholarship to the problem of white privilege and white normative invisibility. Ultimately, the text challenges the contemporary rhetoric of a color-blind or color-evasive world in a discourse that is critically engaging and sophisticated, accessible, and persuasive.

Hip-Hop Within and Without the Academy explores why hip-hop has become such a meaningful musical genre for so many musicians, artists, and fans around the world. Through multiple interviews with hip-hop emcees, DJs, and turntablists, the authors explore how these artists learn and what this music means in their everyday lives. This research reveals how hip-hop is used by many marginalized peoples around the world to help express their ideas and opinions, and even to teach the younger generation about their culture and tradition. In addition, this book dives into how hip-hop is currently being studied in higher education and academia. In the process, the authors reveal the difficulties inherent in bringing this kind of music into institutional contexts and acknowledge the conflicts that are present between hip-hop artists and academics who study the culture. Building on the notion of bringing hip-hop into educational settings, the book discusses how hip-hop is currently being used in public school settings, and how educators can include and embrace hip-hop s educational potential more fully while maintaining hip-hop s authenticity and appealing to young people. Ultimately, this book reveals how hip-hop s universal appeal can be harnessed to help make general and music education more meaningful for contemporary youth."