Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant reason racism endures is because it is structural: it's embedded in culture and in institutions. One of the places that racism hides-and thus perhaps the best place to oppose it-is books for young people. Was the Cat in the Hat Black? presents five serious critiques of the history and current state...

"With forty million copies sold, To Kill a Mockingbird's poignant but clear-eyed examination of human nature has cemented its status as a global classic. Tom Santopietro's new book ... takes a 360-degree look at the Mockingbird phenomenon both on page and screen. Santopietro traces the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird, the impact of the Pulitzer Prize, and investigates both the claims that Lee's book is actually racist and the worldwide controversy...

America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity...

Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of American journalist and author, John Howard Griffin.

"Set mainly in Greenwich Village and Harlem, James Baldwin's 1962 novel, Another Country, is a groundbreaking work of sexual, racial and artistic passions that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality. In her volume in Ig's acclaimed Bookmarked series, award winning author and essayist Kim McLarin shares her appreciation of this seminal novel, demonstrating how its myriad themes-- including relations between men and women (gay...

"Bringing together contributors from a wide-range of critical perspectives, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation is an analytic history of the diverse contributions of Black artists to the medium of comics. Covering comic books, superhero comics, graphic novels and cartoon strips from the early 20th century to the present, the book explores the ways in which Black comic artists have grappled with such themes as the Black experience, gender...

"How should articulations of blackness from the fifth century BCE to the twenty-first century be properly read and interpreted? This important and timely new book is the first concerted treatment of black skin color in the Greek literature and visual culture of antiquity. In charting representations in the Hellenic world of black Egyptians, Aithiopians, Indians, and Greeks, Sarah Derbew dexterously disentangles the complex and varied ways in which...

"In Whiteout: How Canada Cancels Blackness, his new and essential collection of essays, George Elliott Clarke exposes the various ways in which the Canadian imagination demonizes, excludes, and oppresses Blackness. Clarke's range is extraordinary: he canvasses African-Canadian writers who have tracked Black invisibility, highlights the racist bias of true crime writing, reveals the whitewashing of African-Canadian perspectives in universities, and...