The book explores the profound impact of Black writers in shaping self-identity and resistance against racism throughout American history. It draws from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s renowned course, highlighting influential figures like Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Toni Morrison. These authors crafted narratives that challenged oppressive definitions and fostered a sense of community amidst disagreement. The narrative illustrates how their literary contributions have transformed a historically marginalized group into a resilient culture, continually redefining what it means to be "Black" in America.
Henry Louis Jr Gates Ordine dei libri
Henry Louis Gates Jr. è un distinto critico ed editore letterario, sostenitore della letteratura e della cultura nera. Il suo lavoro approfondisce l'analisi e la promozione negli studi africani e afroamericani. Come professore all'Università di Harvard e direttore del W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, plasma il discorso sulla ricerca letteraria e culturale nera. L'influenza di Gates Jr. risiede nell'illuminare e celebrare il patrimonio letterario nero.






- 2024
- 2024
In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest seeking answers to a pressing question: What was the cause of Africans' black skin? Published here for the first time and translated into English, these early documents of scientific racism lay bare the Enlightenment origins of the phantom of racial hierarchy.
- 2024
Host of PBS's Finding Your Roots and famed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discusses African-American immigration and ancestry in the context of the American political climate.
- 2022
The author takes readers on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today's political landscape. We emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative: as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community's most critical personal and social issues. -- adapted from back cover
- 2021
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
- 304pagine
- 11 ore di lettura
"For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity--an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today's political landscape. At road's end, and after Gates's distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative--as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community's most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery's formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn't even past--Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black Church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community's most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society's darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear." -- Jacket
- 2020
Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow
- 240pagine
- 9 ore di lettura
"This is a story about America and the shaping of its democratic values during the Reconstruction era, one of our country's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In this stirring account of the Civil War, emancipation, and the struggle for rights and reunion that followed, one of the premier US scholars delivers a book that is as illuminating as it is timely. Real-life accounts of heroism, grit, betrayal, and bravery drive this book's narrative, spanning America's history from 1861 to 1915 and drawing parallels with to today from acclaimed author, critic, and inaugural MacArthur Genius Henry Louis Gates, Jr."--Page 4 of cover
- 2019
Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow (Scholastic Focus)
- 240pagine
- 9 ore di lettura
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents a journey through America's past and our nation's attempts at renewal in this look at the Civil War's conclusion, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow segregation.
- 2019
"A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated them as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation came in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the 'nadir' of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The book will be accompanied by a new PBS documentary series on the same topic, with full promotional support from PBS"-- Provided by publisher
- 2018
Black Literature and Literary Theory
- 342pagine
- 12 ore di lettura
The imaginative literature of African and Afro-American authors writing in Western languages has long been seen as standing outside the Western literary canon. In fact, however, black literature not only has a complex formal relation to that canon, but tends to revise and reflect Western rhetorical strategies even more than it echoes black vernacular literary forms. This book, first published in 1984, is divided into two sections, thus clarifying the nature of black literary theory on the one hand, and the features of black literary practice on the other. Rather than merely applying contemporary Western theory to black literature, these critics instead challenge and redefine the theory in order to make fresh, stimulating comments not only on black criticism and literature but also on the general state of criticism today.
- 2017
100 Amazing Facts about the Negro
- 496pagine
- 18 ore di lettura
Focusing on historical enlightenment and pride, this influential work by Joel Augustus Rogers serves as a vital resource for African Americans during the Jim Crow era, offering them a sense of identity and worth. Rogers, often regarded as a pioneering black historian, presents a collection of intriguing facts about Black history, though he occasionally embellishes details and employs shock journalism. His book aimed to counteract the prevailing narratives of worthlessness, making it a significant contribution to African American literature and education.