8 Books Published by Anthem Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

Black Configurations is the first volume of a three-volume study that offers a fresh reading of African-American literary history by locating within the literature itself the terms for a revisionary account of Black writing, terms pursued along three distinct but interlocking pathways (each to be pursued in the Impact Series format):

• By charting figurations of tradition among six of the most innovative practitioners of Black literary expression from Sterling Brown to Toni Morrison (Volume 1);
• By following the haunting pathways of spectral dialogues between slavery and African-American modernism (Volume 2);
• By interrogating interlocking topoi of critique and assertion (naming, facing, voicing) across the history of African-American literary expression (Volume 3).

The critical trilogy presents a narrative of African-American literature as a continual, dialectical process, blending confrontation with traumatic origins and the quest for expressive transformation.

This project arises from the question: how does one construe and narrate the story of a tradition for which the conventional structure of literary history—that is, the relation between discourse and its referents—is itself such a politically and thematically charged issue? On one hand, the ideological exclusion of the African-American subject from authorized spheres of meaning and signification gives value to narrating Black literary tradition as the progressive emergence of a fully articulate presence and seems to find warrant in Black writing's persistent thematization of literacy, public performance, and self-definition.

On the other hand, such a narrative of fully realized agency and consciousness risks replicating the dominant ideology's own reductive vision of identity as a predetermined totality, thus imagining some singular and final form for African-American being. The study asserts instead that African-American literature is fueled by the simultaneous workings of a desire for a totally realized subject and the constant displacement of that desire by a willingness—in contrast to the oppressive system that would deny its agency—to put its own mode of being into question.

Black Hauntologies is the second volume of a three-volume study that offers a fresh reading of African-American literary history by locating within the literature itself the terms for a revisionary account of Black writing, terms pursued along three distinct but interlocking pathways (each to be pursued in the Impact Series format):

• By charting figurations of tradition among six of the most innovative practitioners of Black literary expression from Sterling Brown to Toni Morrison (Volume 1);
• By following the haunting pathways of spectral dialogues between slavery and African-American modernism (Volume 2);
• By interrogating interlocking topoi of critique and assertion (naming, facing, voicing) across the history of African-American literary expression (Volume 3).

The critical trilogy presents a narrative of African-American literature as a continual, dialectical process, blending confrontation with traumatic origins and the quest for expressive transformation.

This project arises from the question: how does one construe and narrate the story of a tradition for which the conventional structure of literary history—that is, the relation between discourse and its referents—is itself such a politically and thematically charged issue? On one hand, the ideological exclusion of the African-American subject from authorized spheres of meaning and signification gives value to narrating Black literary tradition as the progressive emergence of a fully articulate presence and seems to find warrant in Black writing's persistent thematization of literacy, public performance, and self-definition.

On the other hand, such a narrative of fully realized agency and consciousness risks replicating the dominant ideology's own reductive vision of identity as a predetermined totality, thus imagining some singular and final form for African-American being. The study asserts instead that African-American literature is fueled by the simultaneous workings of a desire for a totally realized subject and the constant displacement of that desire by a willingness—in contrast to the oppressive system that would deny its agency—to put its own mode of being into question.

Black Configurations is the first volume of a three-volume study that offers a fresh reading of African-American literary history by locating within the literature itself the terms for a revisionary account of Black writing, terms pursued along three distinct but interlocking pathways (each to be pursued in the Impact Series format):

• By charting figurations of tradition among six of the most innovative practitioners of Black literary expression from Sterling Brown to Toni Morrison (Volume 1);
• By following the haunting pathways of spectral dialogues between slavery and African-American modernism (Volume 2);
• By interrogating interlocking topoi of critique and assertion (naming, facing, voicing) across the history of African-American literary expression (Volume 3).

The critical trilogy presents a narrative of African-American literature as a continual, dialectical process, blending confrontation with traumatic origins and the quest for expressive transformation.

This project arises from the question: how does one construe and narrate the story of a tradition for which the conventional structure of literary history—that is, the relation between discourse and its referents—is itself such a politically and thematically charged issue? On one hand, the ideological exclusion of the African-American subject from authorized spheres of meaning and signification gives value to narrating Black literary tradition as the progressive emergence of a fully articulate presence and seems to find warrant in Black writing's persistent thematization of literacy, public performance, and self-definition.

On the other hand, such a narrative of fully realized agency and consciousness risks replicating the dominant ideology's own reductive vision of identity as a predetermined totality, thus imagining some singular and final form for African-American being. The study asserts instead that African-American literature is fueled by the simultaneous workings of a desire for a totally realized subject and the constant displacement of that desire by a willingness—in contrast to the oppressive system that would deny its agency—to put its own mode of being into question.

Animal Presence and Human Identity in Modern Literature explores literary representations of the human-animal encounter in modernity that press human “being” to its limits. This project arises within the question, “Can an animal die?,” formulated in response to Martin Heidegger's famous assertion that, properly speaking, animals cannot “die” but can only “perish,” an assertion that sharply summarizes Western “humanist” philosophical discourse—particularly as etched in the “modern turn” initiated by Descartes—in which the “human” emerges precisely as that (non)animal which enjoys a distinctive relation to both the inner essence and outer edge of existence.

Recently—most notably in the late works of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, and Emmanuel Levinas—philosophers have interrogated the grounds of Heidegger's formulation, putting into question its assumption of unnavigable distance and un-negotiable difference between humans and (other) animals. These inquiries draw partly on Darwinian conceptions of a biologistic continuum among creatures, partly on ethological revelations of animal “capacities,” and partly on ideas intrinsic to philosophy itself, such as a demystification of binarism as an instrument of philosophical structure and analysis.

The book's overarching thesis is that, taken together, texts—including Shakespeare's King Lear, Eliot's Middlemarch, Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, Atwood's Surfacing, and Desai's Clear Light of Day—are both distinctive in their figurations of the human-animal relation and representative of a wide spectrum of literary instantiations of the “question of the animal” for post-Enlightenment Western culture.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sharon M. Draper comes a debut picture book about a timid little ballerina who learns that the show must go on—and will—with a little help from her friends.

Bella loves ballet class and listens hard to the music so she can tippy-toe turn, point, and plié in perfect time. When Madame announces a recital, Bella is determined to do her best. But when she tries to stretch up to leap lightly like a cloud, she wobbles and almost topples—luckily, a friend catches her.

Now, Bella’s nervous; maybe she can’t do this like she thought she could. On recital day, when the curtain goes up and the dancers get in position, Bella freezes. Can she find her courage in time to take the stage?

Perfect for fans of R.J. Palacio’s Wonder, the New York Times bestselling Out of My Mind series follows a girl with cerebral palsy who fights to be heard—all three books are now together in a collectible hardcover boxed set.

Eleven-year-old Melody is not like most people. She can’t walk. She can’t talk. She can’t write. All because she has cerebral palsy. But she also has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She’s the smartest kid in her whole school, but NO ONE knows it. Most people—her teachers, her doctors, her classmates—dismiss her as mentally challenged because she can’t tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by her disability. And she’s determined to let everyone know it…somehow.

This captivating hardcover boxed set includes the bestsellers:

• Out of My Mind
• Out of My Heart
• Out of My Dreams

Melody flies to London to speak at a convention about differently abled kids in this stunning sequel to the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling middle grade novels Out of My Mind and Out of My Heart.

When Melody saves an elderly back-in-the-day actress’s life, the woman is so grateful—and impressed by Melody—that she nominates Melody to be a US spokesperson at an international symposium for kids with different abilities. To Melody’s utter shock and delight, she and two friends of her choice are chosen to participate—and this year’s symposium is in England!

Melody finally gets to fly on an airplane, and even the airline’s somewhat clumsy handling of her wheelchair can’t dampen her excitement to be in London. There, Melody meets kids from all over the world who are rallying for greater accessibility and more thoughtful planning on how to make the world more equal for every kid, no matter the unusual challenges they face. As Melody’s time to speak approaches, she hopes she can find a way to make every word count and make an impact.

The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts is a masterful approach to understanding the U.S. Constitution. It leads the reader through the dynamics that surround the conflicts associated with the development and creation of the U.S. Constitution. This book serves as an interesting exercise in legal and historical analysis, successfully accomplished by Ms. Gloria Browne-Marshall’s artistic, literary and legal skills— Linda McDonald Carter, Esq., Director and Professor of Paralegal Studies, Criminal Justice and Political Science, Essex County College, New Jersey