Kimberly Drake directs the writing program and reaches writing and American literature and culture at Scripps College. She received her bachelor's degree and her PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on nineteenth- and twentieth-century protest fiction by African American and proletarian authors as well as feminist theory and black feminist theory. Her recently published book Subjectivity in the American Protest Novel (2011) concerns trauma theory, double consciousness, and topological const ructions of identity in protest novels by Richard Wright, Ann Petry Chester Himes, Tillie Olsen, and Sarah Wright. She is editing a collection of women's writing about cooking in prison and conducting research for a monograph on social determinism and alternative portrayals of intellectual authority in the American detective novel (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rudolph Fisher, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Walter Mosely, and Lucha Corpi). Her scholarship includes publications and presentations on the fiction of Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, and Ann Petty; on prison narrative; on the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs; on trauma theory and detective novels; and on punk rock music and memoir. Among the essays in this volume: "Brutish Behavior: Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Anticolonial Protests, 1899-1905" by Jeremiah Garsha, "Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes: Modernist Protest in the Harlem Renaissance" by Kimberly Drake "Dystopia as Protest: Zamyatins We and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four" by Rachel Stauffer Book jacket.

“I like a little rebellion now and then”—so wrote Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, enlisting in a tradition that throughout American history has led writers to rage and reason, prophesy and provoke. This is the first anthology to collect and examine an American literature that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future.American Protest Literature presents sources from eleven protest movements—political, social, and cultural—from the Revolution to abolition to gay rights to antiwar protest. Each section reprints documents from the original phase of the movement as well as evidence of its legacy in later times. Informative headnotes place the selections in historical context and draw connections with other writings within the anthology and beyond. Sources include a wide variety of genres—pamphlets, letters, speeches, sermons, legal documents, poems, short stories, photographs, posters—and a range of voices from prophetic to outraged to sorrowful, from U.S. Presidents to the disenfranchised. Together they provide an enlightening and inspiring survey of this most American form of literature.

This stunning work illuminates today’s black experience through the voices of our most transformative and powerful African American poets. Included in this extraordinary volume are the poems of 43 of America’s most talented African American wordsmiths, including Pulitzer Prize–winning poets Rita Dove, Natasha Tretheway, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith, as well as the work of other luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. Included are poems such as “No Wound of Exit” by Patricia Smith, “We Are Not Responsible” by Harryette Mullen, and “Poem for My Father” by Quincy Troupe. Each is accompanied by a photograph of the poet along with a first-person biography. The anthology also contains personal essays on race such as “The Talk” by Jeannine Amber and works by Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, and The Reverend Dr. William Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement, as well as images and iconic political posters of the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. Taken together, Of Poetry and Protest gives voice to the current conversation about race in America while also providing historical and cultural context. It serves as an excellent introduction to African American poetry and is a must-have for every reader committed to social justice and racial harmony.

Between the Revolution and the Civil War, African-American writing became a prominent feature of both black protest culture and American public life. Although denied a political voice in national affairs, black authors produced a wide range of literature to project their views into the public sphere. Autobiographies and personal narratives told of slavery's horrors, newspapers railed against racism in its various forms, and poetry, novellas, reprinted sermons and speeches told tales of racial uplift and redemption. The editors examine the important and previously overlooked pamphleteering tradition and offer new insights into how and why the printed word became so important to black activists during this critical period. An introduction by the editors situates the pamphlets in their various social, economic and political contexts. This is the first book to capture the depth of black print culture before the Civil War by examining perhaps its most important form, the pamphlet.

Impassioned social protest writers inspire readers to relive injustice, empathize with its victims, and take action. The more than 450 entries in this volume survey the most important protest works of our time as well as the classics of the past. Social Protest Literature discusses the lives and concerns of more than 100 writers; analyzes each work's themes, content, and targeted social problems; provides plot synopses and character sketches; demonstrates how major literary creations represent specific ideologies; and explores key social protest concepts in the context of historical events and social and cultural milieus. This beautifully illustrated encyclopedia focuses on recent works that look at environmentalism, labor issues, civil rights for such marginalized groups as gays and lesbians and racial and ethnic minorities, the role of art under repressive regimes, and other timely issues. Extensive cross-references direct readers to other works with similar themes and a comprehensive bibliography suggests further reading.

Literature is an important vehicle to further knowledge of other cultures, and English translations of Okinawan literary works have had a major impact on the field of Okinawan studies. Yet the riches of Okinawa's literature have yet to be adequately mined. Islands of Protest attempts to address this lacuna with this new selection of critically acclaimed modern and contemporary works in English. The anthology includes poetry, fiction, and drama, drawing on Okinawa's distinct culture and subtropical natural environment to convey the emotions and tensions present in everyday life. Tōma Hiroko's poem "Backbone" juxtaposes the natural environment of aquamarine beaches and subtropical flora and fauna with the built environment of America's military bases. Stories by two of Okinawa's most dynamic contemporary authors display wide breadth, from the preservation of island dances and burial practices in Sakiyama Tami's "Island Confinement" and "Come Swaying, Come Swinging" to the bold, disquieting themes of violence and comfort women in Medoruma Shun's "Hope," "Taiwan Woman," and "Tree of Butterflies." The crown jewel of the anthology, Chinen Seishin's play The Human Pavilion, is based on an infamous historical incident in which Okinawans were put on display during a 1903 industrial exhibition in Osaka. In his 1978 masterpiece, Chinen depicts the relentless pressure on Okinawans to become more Japanese. Given the controversial presence of U.S. military forces in Okinawa, this book is particularly timely. Disputes between the United States and Japanese governments over construction of a new marine airbase at Henoko have led to the resignation of Japan's prime minister, the election of an anti-base governor, and repeated protests. Islands of Protest offers a compelling entrée into a complex culture, one marked by wartime decimation, relentless discrimination, and fierce resistance, yet often overshadowed by the clichéd notion of a gentle Okinawa so ceaselessly depicted in Japan's mass media.

A second edition of the classic introduction to arts in social movements, fully updated and now including Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and new digital and social media forms of cultural resistance The Art of Protest, first published in 2006, was hailed as an “essential” introduction to progressive social movements in the United States and praised for its “fluid writing style” and “well-informed and insightful” contribution (Choice Magazine). Now thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition of T. V. Reed’s acclaimed work offers engaging accounts of ten key progressive movements in postwar America, from the African American struggle for civil rights beginning in the 1950s to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century. Reed focuses on the artistic activities of these movements as a lively way to frame progressive social change and its cultural legacies: civil rights freedom songs, the street drama of the Black Panthers, revolutionary murals of the Chicano movement, poetry in women’s movements, the American Indian Movement’s use of film and video, anti-apartheid rock music, ACT UP’s visual art, digital arts in #Occupy, Black Lives Matter rap videos, and more. Through the kaleidoscopic lens of artistic expression, Reed reveals how activism profoundly shapes popular cultural forms. For students and scholars of social change and those seeking to counter reactionary efforts to turn back the clock on social equality and justice, the new edition of The Art of Protest will be both informative and inspiring.