Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism;...
A New York Times Notable Book
Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopoliti...
The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and encounters, as well as searing depictions of the American slave trade. An innovative and challenging work of literary invention, Clotel is receiving much renewed attention today. William Wells Brown, though born into slavery, escaped to become one of...
The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimat...
With Contributions by Dorothy Allison, John Berger, Mark Doty, Mary Gordon, bell hooks, Alfred Kazin, August Wilson, and others For the contributors to Drawing Us In, visual art makes us see what we haven't seen before; it surprises, transforms, and comforts us. Dorothy Allison explains how a painting in a Baptist church taught her as a child that art connects people from disparate backgrounds. Alfred Kazin reflects on his wanderings around New York's museums as a teenager. Mary Gordon finds that Bonnard's still lifes put in perspective her mother's struggle with illness and...
With Contributions by Dorothy Allison, John Berger, Mark Doty, Mary Gordon, bell hooks, Alfred Kazin, August Wilson, and others For the contributo...
This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly plagued by the effects of racism. Living in a society that is drenched in race consciousness has no doubt taken a toll on the way Jones behaves, thinks, and feels, especially when, at the end of his story, he is accused of a brutal crime he did not commit. "One of the most important American writers of the twentieth century ... a] quirky...
This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. Th...
Places for the Spirit is a stunning collection of over 80 documentary photographs of African American folk gardens -- and their creators -- in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina). These landscapes have a unique historical significance due to the design elements and spiritual meanings that have been traced to the yards and gardens of American slaves and further back to their prior African heritage. These deceptively casual or whimsical foliage arrangements are subtle and symbolic reminders of the divine in everyday life, the...
Places for the Spirit is a stunning collection of over 80 documentary photographs of African American folk gardens -- and their creators -- in ...
Robert Gober rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Early in his career, he made deceptively simple sculptures of everyday objects--beginning with sinks and moving on to domestic furniture such as playpens, beds and doors. In the 1990s, his practice evolved from single works to theatrical room-sized environments. In all of his work, Gober's formal intelligence is never separate from a penetrating reading of the socio-political context of his time. His objects and installations are among the most...
Robert Gober rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Early in his c...
Painter, novelist and wrestler, Drexler is the great polymath of Pop
Rosalyn Drexler has always moved between worlds. In the late 1950s and early '60s, she showed sculpture at New York's Reuben Gallery, a gathering place for artists like Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg who combined installation and performance with traditional media. Drexler took part in Happenings at Reuben Gallery and at Judson Church (years after her own quasi-performance as a female wrestler, memorialized by Andy Warhol in the 1962 series Album of a Mat Queen). Drexler's collages and...
Painter, novelist and wrestler, Drexler is the great polymath of Pop
Rosalyn Drexler has always moved between worlds. In the...
