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...

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...

"The first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated women writers in the world. In Bodily Evidence: Racism, Slavery, and Maternal Power in the Novels of Toni Morrison, Geneva Cobb Moore explores how Morrison captures and mirrors the tragedy experienced by and transformation of African Americans, using parody and pastiche, semiotics and metaphors, and allegory to portray black life in the United...

A collection of critical essays on Baldwin and his works. Also includes a chronology of events in the author's life.

James Baldwin has been on of the foremost interpreters of the black American experience. The controversial and outspoken nature of his works has stirred up a storm of critical reaction. Kenneth Kinnamon has selected a broad range of interpretations of Baldwin's life and work. Race, sex, violence, love, and religion, the most recurrent themes in Baldwin's works, receive the scrutiny of diverse commentators. Literary and social critics, black and white,...

The author's critical writings over the past twenty-five years use his creative energies to expose the monster of racist habit and offer a new perspective on the human condition.