Synopses & Reviews
This exciting collection introduces the first-ever annual anthology of writing by African Americans. Here are remarkable essays on a variety of subjects informed bybut not necessarily aboutthe experience of blackness, as seen through the eyes of some of our finest writers.
From art, entertainment, and science to technology, sexuality, and current eventsincluding the battle for the Democratic nomination for the presidencythe essays in this inaugural anthology offer the compelling perspectives of a number of well-known, distinguished writers, among them Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, James McBride, and Walter Mosley, and a number of other writers who are just beginning to be heard.
Selected from a diverse array of respected publications such as the New Yorker, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, and National Geographic, the essays gathered here are about making history, living everyday lifeand everything in between. In “Fired,” author and professor Emily Bernard wrestles with the pain of a friendship inexplicably ended. Kenneth McClane writes hauntingly of the last days of his parents lives in “Driving.” Journalist Brian Palmer shares “The Last Thoughts of an Iraq War Embed.” Jamaica Kincaid describes her oddly charged relationship with that quintessentially British, Wordsworthian flower in “Dances with Daffodils,” and writer Hawa Allan depicts the forces of race and rivalry as two catwalk icons face off in “When Tyra Met Naomi.” A venue in which African American writers can branch out from traditionally “black” subjects, Best African American Essays features a range of gifted voices exploring the many issues and experiences, joys and trials, that, as human beings, we all share.
Please click the "Behind the Book" link for contributors bios.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Published simultaneously in trade paperback and hardcover these first volumes of two new annual series feature essays and stories written by critically acclaimed African-American writers. "Best African American Essays" is a compelling compilation of nonfiction writing on issues that are in the forefront of a national dialogue today, including pieces by and about Senator Barack Obama.
Synopsis
"Best African American Essays" is a compelling compilation of nonfiction writing on issues that are in the forefront of a national dialogue today, including pieces by and about Senator Barack Obama.
About the Author
Debra J. Dickerson was educated at the University of Maryland, St. Marys University, and Harvard Law School. She has been both a senior editor and a contributing editor at
U.S. News & World Report, and her work has also appeared in the
New York Times Magazine, the
Washington Post, the
New Republic, Slate,
the
Village Voice, and
Essence. She is the author of
The End of Blackness and
An American Story. She lives in Albany, New York.
Gerald Early is a noted essayist and American culture critic. A professor of English, African & African American Studies, and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Early is the author of several books, including The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s. He is also editor of numerous volumes, including The Muhammad Ali Reader and The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader. He served as a consultant on four of Ken Burnss documentary films, Baseball, Jazz, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, and The War, and appeared in the first three as an on-air analyst.
Table of Contents
Introduction/By Gerald Early, Series EditorIntroduction/By Debra J. Dickerson, Guest Editor
Friends, Family
Fired: Can a Friendship Really End for no Good Reason?/By Emily Bernard
Gray Shawl/By Walter Mosley
Real Food/By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Entertainment, Sports, the Arts
Hip Hop Planet/By James McBride
Writers Like Me/By Martha Southgate
Dances with Daffodils/By Jamaica Kincaid
The Coincidental Cousins: A Night Out with Artist Kara Walker/By James Hannaham
Music: Bodies in Pain/By Mark Anthony Neal
When Tyra Met Naomi: Race, Fashion, and Rivalry/By Hawa Allen
Dancing in the Dark: Race, Sex, the South, and Exploitative Cinema/By Gerald Early
Modern-Day Mammy?/By Jill Nelson
Broken Dreams/By Michael A. Gonzales
Sciences, Technology, Education
None of the Above: What I.Q. Doesnt Tell You About Race/By Malcolm Gladwell
Driving/By Kenneth A. McClane
Part I: I Had a Dream/By Bill Maxwell
Part II: A Dream Lay Dying/By Bill Maxwell
Part III: The Once and Future Promise/By Bill Maxwell
Gay
Get Out of My Closet: Can You Be White and “On the Down Low”?/By Benoit Denizet-Lewis
Girls to Men: Young Lesbians in Brooklyn Find That a Thugs Life Gets Them More Women/By Chloé A. Hilliard
Internationally Black
A Slow Emancipation/By Kwame Anthony Appiah
Searching for Zion/By Emily Raboteau
Last Thoughts of an Iraq “Embed”/By Brian Palmer
Stop Trying to “Save” Africa/By Uzodinma Iweala
We Are Americans/By Jerald Walker
Activism/ Political Thought
Jena, O.J. and the Jailing of Black America/By Orlando Patterson
One Nation…Under God?/By Sen. Barack Obama
Americans Without Americanness: Is Our Nation Nothing More Than an Address?/By John McWhorter
Barack Obama/By Michael Eric Dyson
Standing Up for “Bad” Words/By Stephane Dunn
Debunking “Driving While Black” Myth/By Thomas Sowell
Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters/By Andrew Sullivan
The High Ground/By Stanley Crouch
Permissions and Credits
About the Editors
From the Hardcover edition.