This collection of profiles, interviews, essays and reviews on such well-known writers as Ken Burns, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke and Edwidge Danticat constitutes a frank conversation on the significance of race in the work of contemporary Black artists.

In What's a Black Critic to Do II, literary critic Donna Bailey Nurse once again gathers together profiles, reviews, interviews, and essays that examine race, culture, and multiculturalism through the lens of literature. This collection, featuring well-known writers, such as Lawrence Hill, Afua Cooper, Christopher Paul Curtis, Natasha Trethewey, Toni Morrison, David Chariandy, Joseph Boyden, and Kwame Dawes. What's a Black Critic to Do II is of especial interest to black readers as well as teachers, librarians, and book clubs. This companion to 2003's What's a Black Critic to Do? constitutes a candid conversation about race in an ostensibly "post-racial" world.

This groundbreaking collection of in-depth profiles, unique interviews, incisive essays and succinct reviews on such well-known writers as Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Andre Alexis, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Edwidge Danticat, Nalo Hopkinson and Lawrence Hill, among many others, constitutes a frank conversation on the significance of race in the work of contemporary black writers. This book is for anyone looking for a way to talk about the often-taboo topic of race, as it appears in novels, movies and plays. Of interest to black Canadian and African-American readers as well as teachers, librarians and book club members, the book provides a vital snapshot of contemporary culture.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature New York Times Bestseller Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, The Denver Post, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly Named a "Must-Read" by Flavorwire and New York Magazine's "Vulture" Blog A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant. Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral. Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

The comedian chronicles his coming of age while analyzing politics & culture in this New York Times–bestselling memoir and satirical guide. If You Don't Buy This Book, You’re a Racist. Have you ever been called “too black” or “not black enough?” Have you ever befriended or worked with a black person? Have you ever heard of black people? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this book is for you. Raised by a pro-black, Pan-Afrikan single mother during the crack years of 1980s Washington, DC, and educated at Sidwell Friends School and Harvard University, Baratunde Thurston has over thirty years’ experience being black. Now, through stories of his politically inspired Nigerian name, the heroics of his hippie mother, the murder of his drug-abusing father, and other revelatory black details, he shares with readers of all colors his wisdom and expertise in how to be black. Beyond memoir, this guidebook offers practical advice on everything from “How to Be The Black Friend” to “How to Be The (Next) Black President” to “How to Celebrate Black History Month.” To provide additional perspective, Baratunde assembled an award-winning Black Panel—three black women, three black men, and one white man (Christian Lander of Stuff White People Like)—and asked them such revealing questions as “When Did You First Realize You Were Black?” and “How Black Are You?” as well as “Can You Swim?” The result is a humorous, intelligent, and audacious guide that challenges and satirizes the so-called experts, purists, and racists who purport to speak for all black people. With honest storytelling and biting wit, Baratunde plots a path not just to blackness, but one open to anyone interested in simply “how to be.” Praise for How to Be Black “Part autobiography, part stand-up routine, part contemporary political analysis, and astute all over. . . . Reading this book made me both laugh and weep with poignant recognition. . . . A hysterical, irreverent exploration of one of America’s most painful and enduring issues.” —Melissa Harris-Perry “Struggling to figure out how to be black in the 21st century? Baratunde Thurston has the perfect guide for you.” —The Root

10... 9... 8... 7... 6... That’s about as far as you get, counting backwards, as you wait for surgery to begin – and that’s all most people know about what I do.