"[W]ithout a doubt one of the most important studies so far completed on literature in French grounded in the experiences of migrants of sub-Saharan... African origin." —Alec Hargreaves, Florida State UniversityFrance has always hosted a rich and vibrant black presence within its borders. But recent violent events have raised questions about France's treatment of ethnic minorities. Challenging the identity politics that have set immigrants against the mainstream, Black France explores how black expressive culture has been reformulated as global culture in the multicultural and multinational spaces of France. Thomas brings forward questions such as—Why is France a privileged site of civilization? Who is French? Who is an immigrant? Who controls the networks of production? Black France poses an urgently needed reassessment of the French colonial legacy.

At turns autobiographical, political, literary, erotic, and humorous, Black Gay Man will spoil our preconceived notions of not only what it means to be... black, gay and male but also what it means to be a contemporary intellectual. Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity, Black Gay Man introduces the eloquent new voice of Robert Reid-Pharr in cultural criticism. At once erudite and readable, the range of topics and positions taken up in Black Gay Man reflect the complexity of American life itself. Treating subjects as diverse as the Million Man March, interracial sex, anti-Semitism, turn of the century American intellectualism as well as literary and cultural figures ranging from Essex Hemphill and Audre Lorde to W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, Black Gay Man is a bold and nuanced attempt to question prevailing ideas about community, desire, politics and culture. Moving beyond critique, Reid-Pharr also pronounces upon the promises of a new America. With the publication of Black Gay Man, Robert Reid-Pharr is sure to take his place as one of this country's most exciting and challenging left intellectuals.

Thirteen of black America's most eloquent voices share their visions for a self-sufficient, self-determined future.From Spike Lee's encouragement of... independent, community fundraising to Joycelyn Elders's warning about the failings of our "sick-care" system to Stanley Crouch's disputation on "heroic" versus "anarchic" individuality, Black Genius is an exceptional, unique colloquy. Conceived by acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley and sponsored by the New York University Africana Studies Program and the Institute of African American Affairs, this book originated as a series of community conversations where "visionaries with solutions" shared powerful views on personal and communal struggles, triumphs, and aspirations. The list of contributors suggests the range of perspectives and talents brought to bear on such issues as economics, political power, work, authority, and culture. Black Genius is a point of departure for vigorous discussion of our current realities and goals for the future-and a portrait of "genius" that leads the way to enriching American life in the twenty-first century.

This book passionately illustrates why the celebration of Black girlhood is essential. Based on the principles and practices of a Black girl-centered... program, it examines how performances of everyday Black girlhood are mediated by popular culture, personal truths, and lived experiences, and how the discussion and critique of these factors can be a great asset in the celebration of Black girls. Drawing on scholarship from womens studies, African American studies, and education, the book skillfully joins poetry, autobiographical vignettes, and keen observations into a wholehearted, participatory celebration of Black girls in a context of hip-hop feminism and critical pedagogy. Through humor, honesty, and disciplined research it argues that hip-hop is not only music, but also an effective way of working with Black girls. Black Girlhood Celebration recognizes the everyday work many young women of color are doing, outside of mainstream categories, to create social change by painting an unconventional picture of how complexand necessarythe goal of Black girl celebration can be.

In her critically acclaimed new novel, Shay Youngblood chronicles the Parisian odyssey of a young African- American woman retracing the footsteps of the... literary legends who inspired her.

In 1975 Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent death partway through their freshman year. Minette Swift had been assertive,... fiercely individualistic, and one of the few black girls at their exclusive, "enlightened" college—and Genna, daughter of a prominent civil defense lawyer, felt duty-bound to protect her at all costs. But fifteen years later, while reconstructing Minette's tragic death, Genna is forced to painfully confront her own past life and identity...and her deepest beliefs about social obligation in a morally gray world. Black Girl / White Girl is a searing double portrait of race and civil rights in post–Vietnam America, captured by one of the most important literary voices of our time.

Stemming from his anthropological field work among black religious groups in Philadelphia in the early 1940s, Arthur Huff Fauset believed it was... possible to determine the likely direction that mainstream black religious leadership would take in the future, a direction that later indeed manifested itself in the civil rights movement. The American black church, according to Fauset and other contemporary researchers, provided the one place where blacks could experiment without hindrance in activities such as business, politics, social reform, and social expression. With detailed primary accounts of these early spiritual movements and their beliefs and practices, Black Gods of the Metropolis reveals the fascinating origins of such significant modern African American religious groups as the Nation of Islam as well as the role of lesser known and even forgotten churches in the history of the black community.In her new foreword, historian Barbara Dianne Savage discusses the relationship between black intellectuals and black religion, in particular the relationship between black social scientists and black religious practices during Fauset's time. She then explores the complexities of that relationship and its impact on the intellectual and political history of African American religion in general.

Part detective tale, part social and cultural narrative, "Black Gotham" is Carla Peterson's riveting account of her quest to reconstruct the lives of... her nineteenth-century ancestors. As she shares their stories and those of their friends, neighbours, and business associates, she illuminates the greater history of African-American elites in New York City. "Black Gotham" challenges many of the accepted "truths" about African-American history, including the assumption that the phrase "nineteenth-century black Americans" means enslaved people, that "New York state before the Civil War" refers to a place of freedom, and that a black elite did not exist until the twentieth century. Beginning her story in the 1820s, Peterson focuses on the pupils of the Mulberry Street School, the graduates of which went on to become eminent African-American leaders. She traces their political activities as well as their many achievements in trade, business, and the professions against the backdrop of the expansion of scientific racism, the trauma of the Civil War draft riots, and the rise of Jim Crow. Told in a vivid, fast-paced style, "Black Gotham" is an important account of the rarely acknowledged achievements of nineteenth-century African Americans and brings to the forefront a vital yet forgotten part of American history and culture.

This important work is the autobiography of Black Hawk aka Black Sparrow Hawk aka Makataimeshekiakiak. Blackhawk was both a leader and warrior of the... Sauk tribe of Native Americans in the United States. He served as a war chief for the Sauk indians and was known as Chief Black Hawk to the english. This is an important read for those interested in native american history especially since it is written by this important figure in native american history about his life and beliefs as well as an intimate firsthand account of the black hawk war.

  This story is told in the words of a tragic figure in American history - a hook-nosed, hollow-cheeked old Sauk warrior who lived under four flags... while the Mississippi Valley was being wrested from his people. The author is Black Hawk himself - once pursued by an army whose members included Captain Abraham Lincoln and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Perhaps no Indian ever saw so much of American expansion or fought harder to prevent that expansion from driving his people to exile and death. He knew Zebulon Pike, William Clark, Henry Schoolcraft, George Catlin, Winfield Scott, and such figures in American government as President Andrew Jackson and Secretary of State Lewis Cass. He knew Chicago when it was a cluster of log houses around a fort, and he was in St. Louis the day the American flag went up and the French flag came down. He saw crowds gather to cheer him in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York - and to stone the driver of his carriage in Albany - during a fantastic tour sponsored by the government. And at last he dies in 1838, bitter in the knowledge that he had led men, women, and children of his tribe to slaughter on the banks of the Mississippi. After his capture at the end of the Black Hawk War, he was imprisoned for a time and then released to live in the territory that is now Iowa. He dictated his autobiography to a government interpreter, Antoine LeClaire, and the story was put into written form by J. B. Patterson, a young Illinois newspaperman. Since its first appearance in 1833, the autobiography has become known as an American classic.

The years between 1760 and 1840 witnessed the young United States' indefatigable expansion, even at the expense of the people already occupying the... land. Roger Nichols's account of the life and times of Black Hawk, the great Sauk leader, provides an engaging way to study this tumultuous period in American history. From his teens until his midsixties, Black Hawk chose to follow the warrior's path, leading groups of Sauks against the Osages, Sioux and the Cherokees, as well as against white pioneers, state militiamen, and U.S. Army regulars. His final stand against the United States, in what became known as the Black Hawk War (1832), proved to be disastrous for his people and paved the way for a torrent of white settlement into the Old Northwest. Although biographical history is especially difficult to write when the subject did not leave any written records, Professor Nichols, an expert in American Indian history, skillfully paints the portrait of Black Hawk, the stubborn, taciturn warrior, and considers possible reasons the aged leader acted as he did. Nichols emphasizes that lack of communication was a major stumbling block to peaceful U.S.-Indian relations. He examines how this contributed to the unnecessary loss of Indian lives and whether it was a convenient excuse used by the military to drive the Indians to the brink of extinction.

Already a classic of war reporting and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest... sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded.Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written—a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.

The acclaimed New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down is "a shocking account of modern warfare . . . gripping and horrifying" (San Francisco... Chronicle) Destined to become a classic of war reporting, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden's brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3rd, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly injured.Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden's minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written--a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle."Black Hawk Down ranks among the best books ever written about infantry combat. . . . A descendent of books like The Killer Angels and We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young."-- Bob Shacochis, The New York Observer"If Black Hawk Down were fiction we'd rank it up there with the best war novels: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, or The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien."-- Tom Walker, The Denver Post"Stands in a league with Shelby Foote's stirring Civil War Diary, Shiloh."-- Jim Haner, The Baltimore Sun"One of the most gripping and authoritative accounts of combat ever written."-- Kirk Spitzer, USA Today"Amazing . . . One of the most intense, visceral reading experiences imaginable."-- The Philadelphia Inquirer A New York Times bestseller for 14 weeks Bowden's Black Hawk Down series, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for best foreign reporting

This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart... Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality.Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives.Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.From the Hardcover edition.