Black Studies

Explore the cultural legacy of enslaved Africans in the American South through the autobiographical lens of one descendant and her family.

Discover the intertwined histories and life stories of a descendant of enslavers and a descendant of the enslaved in rural Georgia.

The story of Maurice Tyree's experience of incarceration and transformation, as told through the letters and poems he wrote

How can one story of a Black family, a community and their relationship to home develop our understanding of lived experience in segregated North Omaha? In 1952, author and scholar Valandra's grandparents bought a two-story white house on the corner of Pratt Street and 28th Street in North Omaha, migrating from rural Arkansas. Through the sharing of the author's lived experience and intergenerational resident interviews, Black Family Enterprise explores what it was like to grow up in a segregated working-class Black community. Part oral history, part urban history, part ethnography of a family and community, this first-person account illustrates the common and unique ways residents claim space and place in defining their lives, community, and sustaining their histories, culture, and traditions. These stories of Black urban placemaking address themes of mutual aid, safety, security, structural inequality and injustice. A series of personal reflections on intergenerational resistance, resilience, and determination, this book is ideal reading for students of Black Studies, African American Studies, Anthropology, Cultural History, Migration Studies, Urban Studies, American Studies, and Social Work.

Is politics the best way to make changes in your community? How can one find a political identity? What is the relationship between Black identity and the US political field? Through reflection and recollection, author Stephen Graves explores these questions as he describes his journey from young Black student, to politician, to teaching at a university level – all as a way to engage with and effect change in his community. Focusing on the author's lived experience, this book will bring life to political theory and studies of American politics.

What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur in the US? Through reflective narrative, Yoni Medhin documents his father's traumatic upbringing in war-torn Ethiopia, and escape to the US. Medhin tells the inspirational story of his discovery of personal validation and purpose at the Colorado School of Mines, and how he established his first business, Grain4Grain. This book explores the successes and challenges Yoni and his co-founder faced in establishing their business, from discovering the necessary technology, to making a critical pivot during the covid pandemic, to closing the business and consolidating their learnings for future ventures. It details the development of Yoni's family's entrepreneurship, from barely making ends meet to launching successful health care services, real estate, and businesses. A story of family, community, and identity, this book is ideal reading for students of Entrepreneurship and Business studies, Sociology, Migration, and Forced Migration Studies.

How does fear — deep, ongoing, systemic fear — impact on Black lives? Through reflections on her own life, anthropologist Dr. Linda Jean Hall Ph.D. draws on traditions of African storytelling to explore the question of how systemic fear affects the twentieth- and twenty-first-century Afro American experience. By using the framing of pandemic waves — a concept all too familiar in the wake of COVID-19 — Hall employs a personal lens to parse out the implications of different "waves of fear" through impactful stages of her life, allowing readers to examine the shifting relationships that define Blackness and survival. Gifting resilience: A pandemic study of Black female resistance is ideal reading for students of Black studies, African American studies, and related courses, as well as for students of feminist and womanist studies, gender studies, cultural studies, history, sociology and anthropology. Unflinchingly honest, this book gives a human face to viewpoints and ideas that originate deep within the complex and diverse African Diasporic lived experience.

How does the concept of love fit with Black identity? When Black Lives Matter activist Marissa Johnson was pressed to address why she "hates white people", she responded with this question: do you love Black people? This book is an exploration of the issues raised by this radical question—a refusal to centre Black identity on whiteness, a question of how love, and self-love, fit with Black identity, and a queering of how Black identity is understood. Told through autobiographical reflection, this book contains the story of one Black woman's process of iterative identity formation, grappling with the intersections of sexuality, gender, self-image, and love. Focusing on lived experience, the book places theories in context, exploring what ideas look like when applied to real life, making it invaluable reading for Black Studies and related courses.

Join writer Steve Majors as he recounts his search for identity through race, family, generational trauma, queerness, and parenthood in this moving memoir. The white-passing youngest son of a Black American family, journalist and author Steve Majors reflects on his life and experiences as a multi-racial queer man. A poignant narrative of identity formation, rejection, and re-formation, this moving memoir covers themes of generational trauma, abuse, race, sexuality, and family relationships. Adapted for course reading from the original memoir High Yella, this book is ideal reading for higher education students of Black Studies, African American Studies, American Studies, Queer and LGBT+ Studies, Family Studies, and related courses in the social sciences.

How does a white man understand what it's like to be Black? How can he start to form a sense of racial consciousness, and take action for racial justice? For Dr Paul Reck PhD, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ramapo College, this journey was sparked and informed by the interactions and relationships he has, and has had, with his Black godchildren and Black students he has taught. To use one's privilege for the benefit of those less privileged means first understanding that privilege and the needs of those you are trying to help: this honest and reflective autoethnography recounts Reck's developing sense of racial consciousness from his childhood through to his work as a university professor. Ideal reading for students of Black Studies or African-American Studies and similar courses, this book will be of interest to anyone who is beginning to explore how to de-centre their own whiteness in their understanding of race.

What is it like growing up Black and gay in the inner city? Author David B. Green Jr critically reflects on this question, and his journey through life to discover joy and meaning, in this affirming memoir. Inner City Sissy is both a Dear Young Me letter and a love note to Black queer people "from the hood" as it touches on themes of identity, music, acceptance, and resistance through the life course from childhood to adulthood. Ideal reading for students of Black and African American Studies as well as Queer & LGBT+ Studies, Sociology, literature and musicology, and related courses, this book brings lived experience to the studies of identity formation and intersectionality.

Struggling with stigma, Tunsill navigated identity, mental health, and discrimination, learning to advocate for herself and others.