A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY19 start with B start with B
Wayman Hogue’s stories of growing up in the Ozarks, according to a 1932 review in the New York Times, “brilliantly illuminate mountain life to its very heart and in its most profound aspects.” A standout among the Ozarks literature that was popular during the Great Depression, this memoir of life in rural Arkansas in the decades following the Civil War has since been forgotten by all but a few students of Arkansas history and folklore.
Back Yonder is a special book. Hogue, like his contemporary Laura Ingalls Wilder, weaves a narrative of a family making its way in rugged, impoverished, and sometimes violent places. From one-room schoolhouses to moonshiners, the details in this story capture the essence of a particular time and place, even as the characters reflect a universal quality that will endear them to modern readers.
Historian Brooks Blevins’s new introduction explores the life of Charles Wayman Hogue, analyzes the people and events that inspired the book, and places the volume in the context of America’s discovery of the Ozarks in the years between the World Wars. The University of Arkansas Press is proud to reissue Back Yonder as the first book in the Chronicles of the Ozarks series, making this Arkansas classic available again, ready to be discovered and rediscovered by readers sure to find the book as interesting and entertaining as ever.
The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson, Ballad of an American, charts Robeson’s career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame. Through his films, concerts, and records, he became a potent symbol representing the promise of a multicultural, multiracial American democracy at a time when, despite his stardom, he was denied personal access to his many audiences.
Robeson was a major figure in the rise of anti-colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, and a tireless campaigner for internationalism, peace, and human rights. Later in life, he embraced the civil rights and antiwar movements with the hope that new generations would attain his ideals of a peaceful and abundant world. Ballad of an American features beautifully drawn chapters by artist Sharon Rudahl, a compelling narrative about his life, and an afterword on the lasting impact of Robeson’s work in both the arts and politics. This graphic biography will enable all kinds of readers—especially newer generations who may be unfamiliar with him—to understand his life’s story and everlasting global significance.
Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson is published in conjunction with Rutgers University’s centennial commemoration of Robeson’s 1919 graduation from the university.
Study guide for Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson (https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/10201015/YA_Adult-Study-Guide-for-A-Graphic-Biography-of-Paul-Robeson.pdf).
View the blad for Ballad of an American.
Revered by Americans across the political spectrum, Barbara Jordan was "the most outspoken moral voice of the American political system," in the words of former President Bill Clinton, who awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. Throughout her career as a Texas senator, U.S. congresswoman, and distinguished professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Barbara Jordan lived by a simple creed: "Ethical behavior means being honest, telling the truth, and doing what you said you were going to do." Her strong stand for ethics in government, civil liberties, and democratic values still provides a standard around which the nation can unite in the twenty-first century.
This volume brings together several major political speeches that articulate Barbara Jordan's most deeply held values. They include:
- "Erosion of Civil Liberties," a commencement address delivered at Howard University on May 12, 1974, in which Jordan warned that "tyranny in America is possible"
- "The Constitutional Basis for Impeachment," Jordan's ringing defense of the U.S. Constitution before the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate break-in
- Keynote addresses to the Democratic National Conventions of 1976 and 1992, in which Jordan set forth her vision of the Democratic Party as an advocate for the common good and a catalyst of change
- Testimony in the U.S. Congress on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and on immigration reform
- Meditations on faith and politics from two National Prayer Breakfasts
- Acceptance speech for the 1995 Sylvanus Thayer Award presented by the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy, in which Jordan challenged the military to uphold the values of "duty, honor, country"
Accompanying the speeches are context-setting introductions by volume editor Max Sherman. The book concludes with the eloquent eulogy that Bill Moyers delivered at Barbara Jordan's memorial service in 1996, in which he summed up Jordan's remarkable life and career by saying, "Just when we despaired of finding a hero, she showed up, to give the sign of democracy.... This is no small thing. This, my friends, this is grace. And for it we are thankful."
"Made in Mexico, born in America," Barrio Princess shares heartwarming family stories, cultural tradition stories, learning English by total immersion, socialization as a minority, education, stories of her mother as a single parent, and women’s stories from a minority point of view.
A 1960s American folk music legend weaves stories of a girlhood on “the singing streets” of Ireland, marriage in Scotland, and arrival in America
Lazarre has spent over twenty-five years living in a Black American family, married to an African American man, birthing and raising two sons. A teacher of African American literature, she has been influenced by an autobiographical tradition that is characterized by a speaking out against racism and a grounding of that expression in one’s own experience—an overlapping of the stories of one’s own life and the world. Like the stories of that tradition, Lazarre’s is a recovery of memories that come together in this book with a new sense of meaning. From a crucial moment in which consciousness is transformed, to recalling and accepting the nature and realities of whiteness, each step describes an aspect of her internal and intellectual journey. Recalling events that opened her eyes to her sons’ and husband’s experience as Black Americans—an operation, turned into a horrific nightmare by a doctor’s unconscious racism or the jarring truths brought home by a visit to an exhibit on slavery at the Richmond Museum of the Confederacy—or her own revealing missteps, Lazarre describes a movement from silence to voice, to a commitment to action, and to an appreciation of the value of a fluid, even ambiguous, identity. It is a coming of age that permits a final retelling of family history and family reunion.
With her skill as a novelist and her experience as a teacher, Jane Lazarre has crafted a narrative as compelling as it is telling. It eloquently describes the author’s delight at being accepted into her husband’s family and attests to the power of motherhood. And as personal as this story is, it is a remarkably incisive account of how perceptions of racial difference lie at the heart of the history and culture of America.
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
Originally published in 1966, Miguel Barnet’s Biography of a Runaway Slave provides the written history of the life of Esteban Montejo, who lived as a slave, as a fugitive in the wilderness, and as a soldier fighting against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence. A new introduction by one of the most preeminent Afro-Hispanic scholars, William Luis, situates Barnet’s ethnographic strategy and lyrical narrative style as foundational for the tradition of testimonial fiction in Latin American literature. Barnet recorded his interviews with the 103-year-old Montejo at the onset of the Cuban Revolution. This insurgent’s history allows the reader into the folklore and cultural history of Afro-Cubans before and after the abolition of slavery. The book serves as an important contribution to the archive of black experience in Cuba and as a reminder of the many ways that the present continues to echo the past.
Born in Pensacola, Florida, the youngest of seventeen children in a relatively poor family, "Chappie" James (1920-1978) rose to attain the rank of four-star general-the highest rank of the peacetime American military. His parents had early on imbued him with personal and national pride and a singular drive that motivated him his whole life.
At Tuskegee Institute, James enrolled in the Army Air Corps unit formed to train black pilots. After combat service in World War II, James became the leader of a fighter group in the Korean War, during which he developed innovative tactics for providing close air support for advancing ground forces. He served with distinction in Vietnam and then became a public affairs officer in the Department of Defense. Between 1970 and 1974, James served as the Pentagon's chief spokesman to youth and civic organizations.
General James's importance transcends his unprecedented achievements as an African American in the military and his role as a spokesman for the patriotic community. He was an early and important proponent of black self-improvement through education, training, and the tireless pursuit of excellence. He became the very embodiment of the American dream.
First published in 1985 in hardcover, this reissue of Black Eagle in paperback makes the inspiring story of a notable Tuskegee airman available again.
Beginning with an examination of the concept of identity as it figures in philosophical and political thought, Gibel Azoulay moves on to consider and compare the politics and traditions of the Black and Jewish experience in America. Her inquiry draws together such diverse subjects as Plessy v. Ferguson, the Leo Frank case, "passing," intermarriage, civil rights, and anti-Semitism. The paradoxical presence of being both Black and Jewish, she argues, leads questions of identity, identity politics, and diversity in a new direction as it challenges distinct notions of whiteness and blackness. Rising above familiar notions of identity crisis and cultural confrontation, she offers new insights into the discourse of race and multiculturalism as she suggests that identity can be a more encompassing concept than is usually thought. Gibel Azoulay adds her own personal history and interviews with eight other Black and Jewish individuals to reveal various ways in which interracial identities are being lived, experienced, and understood in contemporary America.
In the early twentieth century, Marcus Garvey sowed the seeds of a new black pride and determination. Attacked by the black intelligentsia and ridiculed by the white press, this Jamaican immigrant astonished all with his black nationalist rhetoric. In just four years, he built the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the largest and most powerful all-black organization the nation had ever seen. With hundreds of branches, throughout the United States, the UNIA represented Garvey’s greatest accomplishment and, ironically, the source of his public disgrace. Black Moses brings this controversial figure to life and recovers the significance of his life and work.
“Those who are interested in the revolutionary aspects of the twentieth century in America should not miss Cronon’s book. It makes exciting reading.”—The Nation
“A very readable, factual, and well-documented biography of Marcus Garvey.”—The Crisis, NAACP
“In a short, swiftly moving, penetrating biography, Mr. Cronon has made the first real attempt to narrate the Garvey story. From the Jamaican's traumatic race experiences on the West Indian island to dizzy success and inglorious failure on the mainland, the major outlines are here etched with sympathy, understanding, and insight.”—Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Now the Journal of American History).
“Good reading for all serious history students.”—Jet
“A vivid, detailed, and sound portrait of a man and his dreams.”—Political Science Quarterly
To think about the black public sphere we have to be willing to rethink the relationship between markets and freedom, commodity and identity, property and pleasure. This book provides more sophisticated approaches to matters historically consigned to inadequate rubrics—"the Negro problem," "subcultures," "minorities," "inner city," and "multicultural." While these rubrics constrict and stereotype, the analytic potential of the black public sphere is that it facilitates new ways to discuss democratic values and citizenship.
Good remembers playing shinny with clamp-on skates and a tin can that had been stomped until it could whiz across the ice given just the right combination of speed and accuracy. He tells of the boom of the steam engine as it pulled the threshing machine to a neighboring farm on a hot summer day, and of the excitement of riding high on a wagonload of hay, gazing down on the horses’ broad, shining backs. He describes the springtime task of making soap, the ritual of the shivaree, and the pleasure of the church ice-cream social. He remembers well—and chronicles for the reader—the unproclaimed achievements of men and women whose courage and grueling toil brought them rich rewards.
First published in 1967, this reprint makes available once again a faithful portrayal of Black Swamp—a place that no longer exists—and provides a treasure trove of history for Ohioans.
“A fiercely felt memoir about family shame and the transformative power of love even as it’s also an ongoing meditation on privilege and race in twenty-first-century America. This is a debut striking in its empathetic imagination, observational acuity, and emotional intelligence.” — Jim Shepard, author of Like You’d Understand, Anyway.
In a memoir that’s equal parts love story, investigation, and racial reckoning, Munemo unravels and interrogates her whiteness, a shocking secret, and her family’s history.
When interracial romance novels written by her long-dead father landed on Julia McKenzie Munemo’s kitchen table, she—a white woman—had been married to a black man for six years and their first son was a toddler. Out of shame about her father’s secret career as a writer of “slavery porn,” she hid the books from herself, and from her growing mixed-race family, for more than a decade. But then, with police shootings of African American men more and more in the public eye, she realized that understanding her own legacy was the only way to begin to understand her country.
Reaching the top in any sport requires a long, hard climb. But when you start with the baggage of years of family dysfunction and incarceration in a hellish mental hospital, the climb is especially steep. Yet even with such weights to carry, Anissa Zamarron won not one, but two, world championships in women's boxing. Her story, as dramatically intense as the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby, is one of tremendous courage and determination to overcome the odds against her as a Latina and as a woman working through mental illness and addiction—a fight in which Zamarron has been as powerful and successful as she has been in the boxing ring.
In this compelling biography, acclaimed author W. K. "Kip" Stratton collaborates with Zamarron to tell the story of her unlikely rise to the pinnacle of women's boxing. With searing honesty, Zamarron describes how the chaotic breakup of her childhood family caused her to develop "demons" that drove her to aggressive behavior in school, an addiction to self-destructive habits, including cutting, and eventually to a corrupt for-profit mental hospital in which she spent eighteen months tied to a bed. She explains how boxing became her salvation as an adult; she learned how to turn her anger and aggression into motivation to train hard and excel at her sport, not only becoming the first woman to fight as a professional in a sanctioned fight in New York, but also fighting more ten-round fights than any other woman in history. A gripping account of Zamarron's 2005 upset win over Maribel Zurita to claim her second world championship caps the book.
Winner of the American Book Award
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