Best African American Demographic Studies Books
Here you will get Best African American Demographic Studies Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Author: by Clint Smith
English
352 pages
0316492930
Instant #1 New York Times bestseller. “The Atlantic writer drafts a history of slavery in this country unlike anything you’ve read before (Entertainment Weekly). Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarksthose that are honest about the past and those that are notthat offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.
It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it.
It is the story of Angola, a former plantationturnedmaximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.
2. Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell
Author: by Jason L Riley
Basic Books (May 25, 2021)
English
304 pages
A biography of Thomas Sowell, one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers. Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, he has written over thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture.
His bold and unsentimental assaults on liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many readers but have also enraged fellow intellectuals, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media. The result has been a lack of acknowledgment of his scholarship among critics who prioritize political correctness.
In the first-ever biography of Sowell, Jason L. Riley gives this iconic thinker his due and responds to the detractors. Maverick showcases Sowell’s most significant writings and traces the life events that shaped his ideas and resulted in a Black orphan from the Jim Crow South becoming one of our foremost public intellectuals.
3. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Author: by Isabel Wilkerson
Vintage
English
640 pages
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
4
Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation
Author: by Candace Owens
English
320 pages
1982133279
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER It’s time for a black exit. Political activist and social media star Candace Owens addresses the many ways that Democrat Party policies hurt, rather than help, the African American community, and why she and many others are turning right.
Black Americans have long been shackled to the Democrats. Seeing no viable alternative, they have watched liberal politicians take the black vote for granted without pledging anything in return. In Blackout, Owens argues that this automatic allegiance is both illogical and unearned.
She contends that the Democrat Party has a long history of racism and exposes the ideals that hinder the black community’s ability to rise above poverty, live independent and successful lives, and be an active part of the American Dream.
Instead, Owens offers up a different ideology by issuing a challenge: It’s time for a major black exodus. From dependency, from victimhood, from miseducationand the Democrat Party, which perpetuates all three. Owens explains that government assistance is a double-edged sword, that the Left dismisses the faith so important to the black community, that Democrat permissiveness toward abortion disproportionately affects black babies, that the #MeToo movement hurts black men, and much more.
5. Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
Author: by Emmanuel Acho
English
256 pages
1250800463
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAn urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video seriesUncomfortable Conversations with a Black ManYou cannot fix a problem you do not know you have. So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states.
There is a fix, Acho says. But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations. In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to askyet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever.
With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and reverse racism. In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both.
6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Author: by Rebecca Skloot
1400052181
Crown (March 8, 2011)
English
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The story of modern medicine and bioethicsand, indeed, race relationsis refracted beautifully, and movingly. Entertainment WeeklyNOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL (CNN), DEFINING (LITHUB), AND BEST (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTIONNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review Entertainment Weekly O: The Oprah Magazine NPR Financial Times New York Independent (U.K.Times (U.K.
Publishers Weekly Library Journal Kirkus Reviews Booklist Globe and MailHer name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cellstaken without her knowledgebecame one of the most important tools in medicine: The first immortal human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.
7. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
Author: by Wes Moore
One World
English
250 pages
Two kids named Wes Moore were born blocks apart within a year of each other. Both grew up fatherless in similar Baltimore neighborhoods and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on street corners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police.
How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader, while the other ended up a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer this profound question.
In alternating narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.”The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine.
The tragedy is that my story could have been his.”
8. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Author: by Zora Neale Hurston
0061120065
Amistad
English
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 PickA deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly. Zadie SmithOne of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.
Out of print for almost thirty yearsdue largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonistHurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
9. The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America
Author: by Carol Anderson
English
272 pages
1635574250
From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendmentand how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception. A Kirkus Reviews “8 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer”In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.
The Second is neither a pro-gun nor an anti-gun book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans. From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless-revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.
10. The Fire Next Time
Author: by James Baldwin
067974472X
Vintage
English
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation, gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movementand still lights the way to understanding race in America today. “Basically the finest essay I’ve ever read….
Baldwin refused to hold anyone’s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you. Ta-Nehisi Coates At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain.
It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…
11. Where You Are Is Not Who You Are: A Memoir
Author: by Ursula Burns
Amistad (June 15, 2021)
English
240 pages
The first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company looks back at her life and her career at Xerox, sharing unique insights on American business and corporate life, the workers she has always valued, racial and economic justice, how greed is threatening democracy, and the obstacles she’s conquered being Black and a woman.
I am a black woman, I do not play golf, I do not belong to or go to country clubs, I do not like NASCAR, I do not listen to country music, and I have a masters degree in engineering.
I, like a typical New Yorker, speak very fast, with an accent and vernacular that is definitely New York City, definitely Black. So when someone says I’m going to introduce you to the next CEO of Xerox, and the options are lined up against a wall, I would be the first one voted off the island.
In 2009, when she was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Xerox Corporation, Ursula Burns shattered the glass ceiling and made headlines. But the media missed the real story, she insists. It should have been how did this happen? How did Xerox Corporation produce the first African American woman CEO?’ Not this spectacular story titled, Oh, my God, a Black woman making it.
12. A Raisin in the Sun
Author: by Lorraine Hansberry
Vintage
English
151 pages
This groundbreaking play starred Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeill, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands in the Broadway production which opened in 1959. Set on Chicago’s South Side, the plot revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family: son Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister Beneatha, his son Travis and matriarch Lena, called Mama.
When her deceased husband’s insurance money comes through, Mama dreams of moving to a new home and a better neighborhood in Chicago. Walter Lee, a chauffeur, has other plans, however: buying a liquor store and being his own man. Beneatha dreams of medical school.
The tensions and prejudice they face form this seminal American drama. Sacrifice, trust and love among the Younger family and their heroic struggle to retain dignity in a harsh and changing world is a searing and timeless document of hope and inspiration.
Winner of the NY Drama Critic’s Award as Best Play of the Year, it has been hailed as a “pivotal play in the history of the American Black theatre.” by Newsweek and “a milestone in the American Theatre.” by Ebony.
13. All About Love: New Visions
Author: by bell hooks
0060959479
William Morrow Paperbacks
English
The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks’ “Love Song to the Nation, All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
The word love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb, writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness-not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity.
People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question What is love? Her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation.
14. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race
Author: by Beverly Daniel Tatum
0465060684
Basic Books
English
The classic, bestselling book on the psychology of racism – now fully revised and updated Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy?
Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious.
This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.
15. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Author: by Malcolm X
Ballantine Books
English
460 pages
ONE OF TIME’S TEN MOST IMPORTANT NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURYIn the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement.
His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X stands as the definitive statement of a movement and a man whose work was never completed but whose message is timeless. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America. Praise for The Autobiography of Malcolm XExtraordinary …
A brilliant, painful, important book. The New York TimesThis book will have a permanent place in the literature of the Afro-American struggle.I.F.Stone
