Biographies/Autobiographies
Biographies/Autobiographies
Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge
Elleanor Eldridge, born of African and US indigenous descent in 1794, operated a lucrative domestic services business in nineteenth century Providence, Rhode Island. In defiance of her gender and racial background, she purchased land and built rental property from the wealth she...
$104.00
Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the New South Africa by a Member of the Post-apartheid Generation
Apartheid isn't over—so Malaika Wa Azania boldly argues in Memoirs of a Born Free, her account of growing up black in modern-day South Africa. Malaika was born in late 1991, as the white minority government was on its way out, making...
$16.95
Melville and the Idea of Blackness: Race and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 164)
By examining the unique problems that “blackness” signifies in Moby-Dick, Pierre, “Benito Cereno," and "The Encantadas," Christopher Freeburg analyzes how Herman Melville grapples with the social realities of racial difference in nineteenth-century America. Where Melville's critics typically read blackness as...
$133.99
Malcolm X and Africa
"This is an authoritative book on a critical aspect of Malcolm X's courageous political work and thought. Connecting the struggle of Africans and African Americans for liberation to the geopolitics of the Cold War in Africa, this impressive book documents...
$28.00
Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe
Like Fela Kuti and Bob Marley, singer, composer, and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo and his music came to represent his native country's anticolonial struggle and cultural identity. Mapfumo was born in 1945 in what was then the British colony of Rhodesia...
$42.95
The Life of Josiah Henson: An Inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Born into slavery on a Maryland farm, Josiah Henson (1789–1883) worked as a foreman, married, and became a preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Faced with the prospect of separation from his family, Henson fled with his wife and children...
$5.00
The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus
In the dozen years Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) lived in a São Paulo, Brazil, shanty slum, she survived by rummaging for junk. She also kept a diary of her abject poverty. Black, illegitimate, and poor, she suddenly became at...
$32.00
Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa
Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa is an account of the community development programs of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa. It covers the emergence of the movement’s ideas and practices in the context of the...
$24.95
Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White
“A profound and uplifting account of Robert F. Kennedy’s brave crusade for racial equality. This is narrative history at its absolute finest, with RFK squarely at the center of the 1960s civil rights movement along with Martin Luther King Jr.,...
$39.95
Jimi Hendrix Black Legacy: A Dream Deferred
Jimi Hendrix - Black Legacy (A Dream Deferred) is a deep exploration of Jimi Hendrix's subtle, yet ubiquitous footprint on Black culture. Often, Jimi Hendrix was seen by many to have transcended race, which is a slap in the face...
$29.99
In the Black: My Life
Winner of the 2017 Toronto Book Award A remarkable memoir about achieving prosperity in the face of relentless prejudice In the Black traces B. Denham Jolly’s personal and professional struggle for a place in a country where Black Canadians have faced...
$29.95
Manchild in the Promised Land
With more than two million copies in print, Manchild in the Promised Land is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time—the definitive account of African-American youth in Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s, and a seminal work of modern literature.Published...
$20.00
Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination
NAACP 2017 Image Award Finalist 2018 Michigan Notable Books honoree The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present,...
$18.99
Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands
Winner of the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2020Highly commended for PEN Hessell–Tiltman Prize 2020A haunting and evocative history of British empire, told through one woman’s family story“Where are you from?” was the question hounding Hazel...
$19.95
I'm Going to Have a Little House: The Second Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus
In August 1960 the publication of Quarto de Despejo (Child of the Dark) created a sensation in Brazil—and in the rest of the world—as it appeared in translations in fourteen languages. That diary of a poor black woman from a favela on...
$25.00
Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History
This transformative collection advances new approaches to Black intellectual history by foregrounding the experiences and ideas of people who lacked access to more privileged mechanisms of public discourse and power. While the anthology highlights renowned intellectuals such as W. E....
$129.99
The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500 2000
Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on...
$160.00
The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500 2000
Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on...
$58.50
Henry Redhead Yorke, Colonial Radical: Politics and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1772-1813 (The Enlightenment World)
This is a political, cultural and intellectual biography of the neglected but important figure, Henry Redhead Yorke. A West Indian of African/British descent, born into a slave society but educated in Georgian England, he developed a complex identity to which...
$221.00
Head On: An All Black's memoir of rugby, dementia, and the hidden cost of success
An All Black's memoir of rugby, dementia, and the hidden cost of success 'The best sports book I have read in decades' - Kevin Norquay, Stuff 'Startlingly honest' - Phil Gifford 'A brilliant read. Bold, brave and honest' - Mike...
$24.99
Growing Up African in Australia
People of African descent have been in Australia for at least 200 years, yet their stories are largely missing from Australian writing. Australians of the African diaspora have arrived here in many different ways- directly from the continent; via the...
$22.99
Great Negroes: Past and Present: Volume One (1)
More than 170 historically organized biographies of African Americans famous in the fields of education, science, music, and more are offered in this compelling collection.
$19.95
Great Men of Color: Volume I: North America
A comprehensive introduction for the general reader and a convenient reference for the researcher, it is vital reading for all Americans, black and white, who want a fuller understanding of the great personalities who have shaped our world. Illustrations completement...
$36.99
From Black to African American: A New Social Representation
An analysis of the recent switch from the name Black to African American symbolizes a reconceptualization of Americans of African descent away from race to culture. This book examines the emergence of a new representation whose rapid spread has been...
$123.50
Freedom’s Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America
$115.99
Freedom’s Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America
A fascinating study of freedom and slavery, told through the life of an escaped slave who built a life in the Hudson ValleyIn 1793 James F. Brown was born a slave, and in 1868 he died a free man. At...
$115.99
Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Longlisted for the Reading the West Book AwardsNAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction With journalistic skill, heart, and hope, Requiem for the Massacre reckons with the tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one hundred years after the most infamous act...
$18.95
Don't Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre In Her Own Words
$29.99
Don't Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre In Her Own Words
"Every day, I have lived through the massacre. While our country may forget this history, I cannot." Viola Ford Fletcher Viola Ford Fletcher's memoir Don't Let Them Bury My Story vividly recounts the lasting impact of the Tulsa Massacre on her life. As...
$29.99
Edward W. Blyden's Intellectual Transformations: Afropublicanism, Pan-Africanism, Islam, and the Indigenous West African Church
Distinguished by its multidisciplinary dexterity, this book is a masterfully woven reinterpretation of the life, travels, and scholarship of Edward W. Blyden, arguably the most influential Black intellectual of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces Blyden’s various moments...
$49.95
A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir
World-renowned hip-hop artist Jason “Timbuktu” Diakité’s vivid and intimate journey through his own and his family’s history―from South Carolina slavery to twenty-first-century Sweden. Born to interracial American parents in Sweden, Jason Diakité grew up between worlds―part Swedish, American, black, white,...
$14.95
Divining Slavery and Freedom: The Story of Domingos Sodré, an African Priest in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
Since its original publication in Portuguese in 2008, this first English translation of Divining Slavery has been extensively revised and updated, complete with new primary sources and a new bibliography. It tells the story of Domingos Sodré, an African-born priest...
$49.49