43 Books Published by Haymarket Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

Click for more detail about #Sayhername: Black Women’s Stories of State Violence and Public Silence by Kimberlé Crenshaw #Sayhername: Black Women’s Stories of State Violence and Public Silence

by Kimberlé Crenshaw
Haymarket Books (Jan 09, 2024)
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Since the movement’s founding in 2014, #SayHerName has gained international attention and has served as both a rallying cry and organizing principle in the aftermath of police killings of Black women, including, most recently, the police killing of Breonna Taylor.

Black women, girls, and femmes as young as seven and as old as ninety-three have been killed by the police, though we rarely hear their names or learn their stories. Breonna Taylor, Alberta Spruill, Rekia Boyd, Shantel Davis, Shelly Frey, Kayla Moore, Kyam Livingston, Miriam Carey, Michelle Cusseaux, and Tanisha Anderson are among the many lives that should have been. The #SayHerName campaign lifts up the stories of these women and girls in order to build a gender-inclusive framework for understanding, discussing, and combating police violence.

Without this knowledge, we cannot have a full understanding of the wide-ranging circumstances that make Black bodies disproportionately subject to police violence, and we cannot understand the ways in which racialized policing and gendered violence intersect and produce lethal consequences. #SayHerName provides an analytical framework for understanding Black women’s susceptibility to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, and it explains how—through black feminist storytelling and ritual—we can effectively mobilize various communities and empower them to advocate for racial justice.

Including Black women in police violence and gender violence discourses sends the powerful message that, in fact, all Black lives matter and that the police cannot kill without consequence. This is a powerful story of Black feminist practice, community-building, enablement, and Black feminist reckoning.


Click for more detail about Angela Davis (paperback): An Autobiography by Angela Davis Angela Davis (paperback): An Autobiography

by Angela Davis
Haymarket Books (May 02, 2023)
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This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis’s classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author.

"I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my autobiography with Haymarket Books at a time when so many are making collective demands for radical change and are seeking a deeper understanding of the social movements of the past." —Angela Y. Davis

Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in the struggle. Davis describes her journey from childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI’s list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humor, and conviction, Angela Davis’s autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time.


Click for more detail about Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate Black Women Writers at Work

by Claudia Tate
Haymarket Books (Jan 01, 2023)
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“Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard.” —Claudia Tate, from the introduction

Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century.

Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.

Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art.

Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.


Click for more detail about After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America by Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America

by Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams
Haymarket Books (Oct 25, 2022)
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After Life is a collective history of how Americans experienced, navigated, commemorated, and ignored mass death and loss during the global COVID-19 pandemic, mass uprisings for racial justice, and the near presidential coup in 2021 following the 2020 election. Inspired by the writers who documented American life during the Great Depression and World War II for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the editors asked twenty-first-century historians and legal experts to focus on the parallels, convergences, and differences between the exceptional “long 2020”, while it unfolds, and earlier eras in U.S. History.

Providing context for the entire volume, After Life’s Introduction explains how COVID-19 and America’s long history of inequality, combined with a corrupt and unconcerned federal government, produced one of the darkest times in our nation’s history. Discussing the rise of the COVID-19 death toll in the United States, eventually exceeding the 1918 flu, the AIDS epidemic, and the Civil War, it ties public health, immigration, white supremacy, elections history, and epidemics together, and provides a short history of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the beginnings of a Third Reconstruction.

After Life documents how Americans have dealt with grief, pain, and loss, both individually and communally, and how we endure and thrive. The title is an affirmation that even in our suspended half-living during lockdowns and quarantines, we are a nation of survivors—with an unprecedented chance to rebuild society in a more equitable way.

Contributors include: Gwendolyn Hall, Heather Ann Thompson, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Keith Ellison, Keri Leigh Merritt, Martha Hodes, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Mary L. Dudziak, Monica Muñoz Martinez, Peniel E. Joseph, Philip J. Deloria, Rhae Lynn Barnes, Robert L. Tsai, Robin D. G. Kelley, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Stephen Berry, Tera W. Hunter, Ula Y. Taylor, and, Yohuru Williams.


Click for more detail about Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners Abolition. Feminism. Now.

by Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners
Haymarket Books (Jan 18, 2022)
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As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment — halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist — usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color - organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures.


Click for more detail about Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis Angela Davis: An Autobiography

by Angela Davis
Haymarket Books (Jan 18, 2022)
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This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis’s classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author.

I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my autobiography with Haymarket Books at a time when so many are making collective demands for radical change and are seeking a deeper understanding of the social movements of the past.” —Angela Y. Davis

Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in struggle. Davis describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI’s list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction, Angela Davis’s autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time.


Click for more detail about I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love by Mahogany L. Browne I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love

by Mahogany L. Browne
Haymarket Books (Sep 14, 2021)
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Mahogany L. Browne’s evocative book-length poem explores the impacts of the prison system on both the incarcerated and the loved ones left behind.

I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love is an expansive poetic meditation on who we think is bound by incarceration. The answer: all of us. Weaving personal narrative, case studies, and inventive form, Browne invokes the grief, pain, and resilience in the violent wake of the prison system. This poem is dirge work but allows us to revel in the intricacies of our human condition. Written by a beloved and prolific writer, organizer, and educator, this work serves as a practice of self-reflection and accountability. Browne steps into the lineage of Sonia Sanchez’s Does Your House Have Lions? with the precision of a master wordsmith and the empathy of an attentive storyteller.


Click for more detail about We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

by Mariame Kaba
Haymarket Books (Feb 23, 2021)
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“Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.”

What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.

With chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”


Click for more detail about Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice by Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice

by Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian
Haymarket Books (Dec 08, 2020)
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Black Lives Matter at School is an essential resource for all those seeking to build an antiracist school system.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning and #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

Black Lives Matter at School succinctly generalizes lessons from successful challenges to institutional racism that have been won through the Black Lives Matter at School movement. This book will inspire many more educators and activists to join the Black Lives Matter at School movement at a moment when this antiracist work in our schools could not be more urgent and critical to education justice.

Contributors include Opal Tometi, who wrote a moving foreword, Bettina Love who shares a powerful chapter on abolitionist teaching, Brian Jones who centers Black Lives Matter at School in the historical context of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in education and prominent teacher union leaders from Chicago to Los Angeles and beyond who discuss the importance of anti-racist struggle in education unions. The book includes essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from educators, students, and parents around the country who have been building Black Lives Matter at School on the ground.


Click for more detail about The Brother You Choose: Paul Coates and Eddie Conway Talk about Life, Politics, and the Revolution by Susie Day,  W. Paul Coates and Eddie Conway The Brother You Choose: Paul Coates and Eddie Conway Talk about Life, Politics, and the Revolution

by Susie Day, W. Paul Coates and Eddie Conway
Haymarket Books (Oct 13, 2020)
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Includes an afterword by acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates

They framed Eddie Conway for murder and locked him away for life, but they couldn’t stop him from organizing.

In 1971, Eddie Conway, Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn’t know Eddie well – the little he knew, he didn’t much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie’s charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie – and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over forty-three years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him. He and Eddie shared their lives and worked together on dozens of legal campaigns in hopes of gaining Eddie’s release. Paul’s founding of the Black Classic Press in 1978 was originally a way to get books to Eddie in prison. When, in 2014, Eddie finally walked out onto the streets of Baltimore, Paul Coates was there to greet him. Today, these two men remain rock-solid comrades and friends – each, the other’s chosen brother.

When Eddie and Paul met in the Baltimore Panther Party, they were in their early twenties. They are now into their seventies. This book is a record of their lives and their relationship, told in their own voices. Paul and Eddie talk about their individual stories, their work, their politics, and their immeasurable bond.


Click for more detail about Can I Kick It? by Idris Goodwin Can I Kick It?

by Idris Goodwin
Haymarket Books (Sep 20, 2019)
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Award-winning poet and playwright Idris Goodwin interrogates and remixes our cultural past in order to make sense of our present and potential futures.


Click for more detail about Crossfire: A Litany for Survival by Staceyann Chin Crossfire: A Litany for Survival

by Staceyann Chin
Haymarket Books (Sep 20, 2019)
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Crossfire collects Staceyann Chin’s empowering, feminist-LGBTQ-Caribbean, activist-driven poetry for the first time in a single book. According to The New York Times, Chin is "sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking." The Advocate says that her poems, "combine hilarious one-liners with a refusal to conform" and note "Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world."


Click for more detail about 1919 by Eve L. Ewing 1919

by Eve L. Ewing
Haymarket Books (Jun 04, 2019)
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Poetic reflections on race, class, violence, segregation, and the hidden histories that shape our divided urban landscapes.


Click for more detail about Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix Build Yourself a Boat

by Camonghne Felix
Haymarket Books (Apr 23, 2019)
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"With Build Yourself a Boat, Camonghne Felix heralds a thrillingly new form of storytelling, as much investigation as it is song, as broken as it is doused in genuine strength. These poems are packed with embodiments—not depictions—of Black female pain, empowerment, memory, and discovery. This is a fantastically tender book, generous in its precision and thoughtful in its experimentation. This debut does not come quietly or shyly—Felix is an applaudable master of language, inventively carving and pulling at words and sounds to assemble the parts of this story. Here is a voice that commands, insists, reiterates, and consumes—a voice that has earned its right to shout freely, with curiosity and aliveness and heart."
—Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

"Camonghne Felix’s debut poetry collection, Build Yourself a Boat, is about the trauma and pain of black womanhood. Felix explores what it means, politically to be a black woman in a world of Trump and personally, exploring the ways heartbreak and other points of pain change a person and their body. Build Yourself a Boat was exactly what I needed to read, and revisit, this season as men decided what women should do with their bodies and as I learned to manage heartbreak."
—Arriel Vinson, Electric Literature

"Centering on black, female identity, Camonghne Felix’s Build Yourself a Boat is an exquisite and thoughtful collection that should be on everyone’s TBR."
Bustle

"Camonghne Felix uses profound language to explore the policing of the Black body, and Build Yourself a Boat bridges the gap between artistry and the world of politics, connecting Black womanhood and Felix’s coming of age in New York City."
Blavity

"These poems occupy space on the page, but also claim access for a voice."
—Tara Betts, Newcity

"Every few seasons, we get a piece of art that sees us whole, that knows the smell of our hiding places, that will never let us hear it or ourselves the same again. Build Yourself a Boat is one of the most soulful, genius pieces of art that has ever seen, felt and heard me. I tried to run away from these poems. They welcomed, understood and side-eyed my fear. I look forward to bringing this book into all my classes, my relationships and sacred rooms for the rest of my life. It’s really that good."
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"Camonghne Felix is a brilliant writer, thinker, imaginer, builder—a young leader who shifts and opens the possibilities for a more just, better lit world, with each step, each word, each question."
—Kathy Engel

"Where is the room for Black folks to be in their bodies? Framed here in this book, between a slip of ’Weary’ and ’DISCLAIMER, ’ is a theory. [Felix’s] footnotes articulate spaces in which we might sink or swim, or skate. She declares, ’you can’t un-see me, ’ skewering American political nostalgia—liberal and conservative. As I type this, I right click and choose ’Add to Dictionary’ in order to erase the red wave under her name that signifies a mistake to be addressed. I choose to include her in my lexicon ’because we’re looking at a critical fault otherwise.’ Who else could possibly do this impossible work justice?"
—Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, author of Open Interval


Click for more detail about The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic by Jamila Woods, Mahogany L. Browne, and Idrissa Simmonds The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic

by Jamila Woods, Mahogany L. Browne, and Idrissa Simmonds
Haymarket Books (Apr 17, 2018)
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"[The BreakBeat Poets is] one of the most diverse and important poetry anthologies of the last 25 years."—Latino Rebels

Black Girl Magic continues and deepens the work of the first BreakBeat Poets anthology by focusing on some of the most exciting Black women writing today. This anthology breaks up the myth of hip-hop as a boys’ club, and asserts the truth that the cypher is a feminine form.

Poet and vocalist Jamila Woods was raised in Chicago, and graduated from Brown University, where she earned a BA in Africana Studies and Theatre & Performance Studies. Influenced by Lucille Clifton and Gwendolyn Brooks, much of her writing explores blackness, womanhood, and the city of Chicago.

Mahogany L. Browne is a Cave Canem and Poets House alumna and the author of several books including Smudge and Redbone. She directs the poetry program of the Nuyorican Poets Café.

Idrissa Simmonds is a fiction writer and poet. Her work has appeared in Black Renaissance Noire, The Caribbean Writer, Fourteen Hills Press, and elsewhere. She is the 2014 winner of the Crab Creek Review poetry contest, and a New York Foundation for the Arts and Commonwealth Short Story Award Finalist.


Click for more detail about New-Generation African Poets (TANO): A Chapbook Box Set by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani New-Generation African Poets (TANO): A Chapbook Box Set

by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani
Haymarket Books (Apr 10, 2018)
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<>Critical Praise for the Previous Chapbook Box Sets:

“An ambitious, vital project that delivers exactly what it promises…As a group, the chapbooks dispel stereotypes about African writing. They also illustrate what editors Dawes and Abani note about the many ways poets can understand or redefine their ties to Africa.rdquo;
—Washington Post on New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tatu)

“Dawes and Abani have taken on the vital project of publishing short collections by contemporary poets from Africa, packaged together in beautiful boxed sets.”
—New York Times Magazine

The limited-edition box set is an annual project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry.The eleven poets included in this box set are: Leila Chatti, Saddiq Dzukogi, Amanda Holiday, Omotara James, Yalie Kamara, Rasaq Malik, Umniya Najaer, Kechi Nomu, Romeo Oriogun, Henk Rossouw, and Alexis Teyie.


Click for more detail about Human Highlight: An Ode to Dominique Wilkins by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval Human Highlight: An Ode to Dominique Wilkins

by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval
Haymarket Books (Mar 27, 2018)
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Kevin Coval and Idris Goodwin pay poetic homage to slam dunk virtuoso Dominique Wilkins, and creativity & improvisation in the game of basketball.


Click for more detail about A Beautiful Ghetto by Devin Allen A Beautiful Ghetto

by Devin Allen
Haymarket Books (Sep 12, 2017)
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On April 18, 2015, the city of Baltimore erupted in mass protests in response to the brutal murder of Freddie Gray by police. Devin Allen was there, and his iconic photos of the Baltimore uprising became a viral sensation.

In these stunning photographs, Allen documents the uprising as he strives to capture the life of his city and the people who live there. Each photo reveals the personality, beauty, and spirit of Baltimore and its people, as his camera complicates popular ideas about the "ghetto."

Allen’s camera finds hope and beauty doing battle against a system that sows desperation and fear, and above all, resistance, to the unrelenting pressures of racism and poverty in a twenty-first-century American city.


Click for more detail about Electric Arches by Eve L. Ewing Electric Arches

by Eve L. Ewing
Haymarket Books (Sep 12, 2017)
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Original meditations on race, gender, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up, from a distinctive new voice.


Click for more detail about The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent

by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff
Haymarket Books (Jun 20, 2017)
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Winner of the 2017 Central New York Book Award for nonfiction

Finalist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Award

The first black woman to be named United States poet laureate, Brook’s poetry, fiction, and social commentary shed light on the beauty of humanity, the distinct qualities of black life and community, and the destructive effects of racism, sexism, and class inequality.

A collection of thirty essays combining critical analysis and personal reflection, The Whiskey of Our Discontent, presents essential elements of Brooks’ oeuvre—on race, gender, class, community, and poetic craft, while also examining her life as poet, reporter, mentor, sage, activist, and educator.


Click for more detail about A People’s History of Chicago by Kevin Coval A People’s History of Chicago

by Kevin Coval
Haymarket Books (Mar 28, 2017)
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Known variously as “the Windy City,” “the City of Big Shoulders,” or “Chi-Raq,” Chicago is one of the most widely celebrated, routinely demonized, and thoroughly contested cities in the world.

Chicago is the city of Gwendolyn Brooks and Chief Keef, Al Capone and Richard Wright, Lucy Parsons and Nelson Algren, Harold Washington and Studs Terkel. It is the city of Fred Hampton, House Music, and the Haymarket Martyrs. Writing in the tradition of Howard Zinn, Kevin Coval’s A People’s History of Chicago celebrates the history of this great American city from the perspective of those on the margins, whose stories often go untold. These seventy-seven poems (for the city’s seventy-seven neighborhoods) honor the everyday lives and enduring resistance of the city’s workers, poor people, and people of color, whose cultural and political revolutions continue to shape the social landscape.

Kevin Coval is the poet/author/editor of seven books including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and the play, This Is Modern Art, co-written with Idris Goodwin. Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival and the Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors, Coval teaches hip-hop aesthetics at the University of Illinois–Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has named him “the voice of the new Chicago” and the Boston Globe calls him “the city’s unofficial poet laureate.”


Click for more detail about This Is Modern Art: A Play by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval This Is Modern Art: A Play

by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval
Haymarket Books (Sep 13, 2016)
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Graffiti crews are willing to risk anything for their art. Called vandals, criminals, even creative terrorists, graffiti artists set out to make their voices heard and alter the way people view the world. But when one crew finishes the biggest graffiti bomb of their careers, the consequences get serious and spark a public debate asking, “Where does art belong?”


Click for more detail about From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Haymarket Books (Feb 23, 2016)
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For most of US history, the police have used violence against African Americans with impunity?but after the murder of unarmed teenager Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, mass protests erupted to challenge that impunity. In the process, a new generation of Black activists has come to question the old methods of struggle, puncture the Obama-era illusion of a ?postracial” United States, and declare without apology that #BlackLivesMatter.

In this stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the history and current realities of US racism. Taylor examines how institutional racism has created and shaped the structural problems that affect Black people, such as mass incarceration and unemployment, even as more Black people hold political office than ever before. She paints a vivid picture of the context for this new struggle against police violence?and shows the potential of the Black Lives Matter movement to reignite and broaden the struggle for liberation.


Click for more detail about Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

by Angela Davis
Haymarket Books (Feb 09, 2016)
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In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today’s struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "Freedom is a constant struggle."


Click for more detail about The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop

by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall
Haymarket Books (Apr 07, 2015)
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Hip-Hop is the largest youth culture in the history of the planet rock. This is the first poetry anthology by and for the Hip-Hop generation.

It has produced generations of artists who have revolutionized their genre(s) by applying the aesthetic innovations of the culture. The BreakBeat Poets features 78 poets, born somewhere between 1961-1999, All-City and Coast-to-Coast, who are creating the next and now movement(s) in American letters.

The BreakBeat Poets is for people who love Hip-Hop, for fans of the culture, for people who’ve never read a poem, for people who thought poems were only something done by dead white dudes who got lost in a forest, and for poetry heads. This anthology is meant to expand the idea of who a poet is and what a poem is for.

The BreakBeat Poets are the scribes recording and remixing a fuller spectrum of experience of what it means to be alive in this moment. The BreakBeat Poets are a break with the past and an honoring of the tradition(s), an undeniable body expanding the canon for the fresher.


Click for more detail about Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order by Howard Zinn Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Jan 30, 2014)
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In this slim volume, Zinn lays out a clear and dynamic case for civil disobedience and protest, and challenges the dominant arguments against forms of protest that challenge the status quo. Zinn explores the politics of direct action, nonviolent civil disobedience, and strikes, and draws lessons for today.


Click for more detail about Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal by Howard Zinn Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Jan 24, 2014)
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Of the many books that challenged the Vietnam War, Howard Zinn’s stands out as one of the best?and most influential. It helped sparked national debate on the war. It includes a powerful speech written by Zinn that President Johnson should have given to lay out the case for ending the war. Includes a new introduction by the author.


Click for more detail about The Southern Mystique by Howard Zinn The Southern Mystique

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Jan 24, 2014)
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The South has long been surrounded in mystique. In this powerful volume, drawing on Zinn’s own experiences teaching in the South and working within the Southern civil rights movement, Zinn challenges the stereotypes surrounding the South, race relations, and how change happens in history. With a new introduction from the author.


Click for more detail about Postwar America: 1945-1971 by Howard Zinn Postwar America: 1945-1971

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Jan 23, 2014)
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The postwar boom in the U.S. brought about massive changes in U.S. society and culture. In this accessible volume, historian Howard Zinn offers a view from below on these vital years in American history. By critically examining U.S. militarism abroad and racism at home, he raises challenging questions about this often romanticized era.


Click for more detail about Marx in Soho: A Play on History by Howard Zinn Marx in Soho: A Play on History

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Jan 09, 2014)
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The premise of this witty and insightful "play on history" is that Karl Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, though, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.


Click for more detail about Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian by Howard Zinn Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Jan 09, 2014)
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In this lively collection of essays, Zinn discusses a wide range of historical and political topics, from the role of the Supreme Court in U.S. history to the nature of higher education today.


Click for more detail about SNCC: The New Abolitionists by Howard Zinn SNCC: The New Abolitionists

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Dec 10, 2013)
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SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It is considered an indispensable study of the organization, of the 1960s, and of the process of social change. Includes a new introduction by the author.


Click for more detail about The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’S Dream
 by Gary Younge The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’S Dream

by Gary Younge
Haymarket Books (Sep 10, 2013)
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MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DELIVERED his powerful ?I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Fifty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the civil rights movement. It continues to be heralded as a beacon in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.

This gripping book is rooted in new and important interviews with Clarence Jones, a close friend of and draft speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr., and Joan Baez, a singer at the march, as well as Angela Davis and other leading civil rights leaders. It brings to life the fascinating chronicle behind ?The Speech” and other events surrounding the March on Washington. Younge skillfully captures the spirit of that historic day in Washington and offers a new generation of readers a critical modern analysis of why ?I Have a Dream” remains America’s favorite speech.
_________

"It was over eighty degrees when Martin Luther King Jr. took the stage at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. King was the last speaker. By the time he reached the podium, many in the crowd had started to leave. Not all those who remained could hear him properly, but those who could stood rapt. ’Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed,’ said King as though he were wrapping up. ’Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.’ Then he set his prepared text aside. [Clarence] Jones saw his stance turn from lecturer to preacher. He turned to the person next to him: ’Those people don’t know it but they’re about to go to church.’ A smattering of applause filled a pause more pregnant than most. ’So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.’”
?from the introduction

Book Review

Click for more detail about More than an Athlete: Poems by Etan Thomas by Etan Thomas More than an Athlete: Poems by Etan Thomas

by Etan Thomas
Haymarket Books (May 28, 2013)
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With the conviction of a Bill Russell, and the poetic finesse of Muhammad Ali, Thomas takes on controversial topics such as The Death Penalty, the GOP, racism and abortion. More Than an Athlete is a statement about our generation not being confined to a box, a definition or a label.


Click for more detail about Bury My Clothes by Roger Bonair-Agard Bury My Clothes

by Roger Bonair-Agard
Haymarket Books (May 07, 2013)
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Bury My Clothes, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for poetry, is a meditation on violence, race, and the place in art at which they intersect. Art?specifically in oppressed communities?is about survival, Roger Bonair-Agard asserts, and establishing personhood in a world that says you have none. Through poetry, we transform both the world of art and the world itself.

Roger Bonair-Agard is a Cave Canem fellow, two-time National Poetry Slam Champion, and author of Tarnish and Masquerade and Gully. He has appeared three times on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and is Co-founder and Artistic Director of the LouderARTS Project in New York.


Click for more detail about Schtick by Kevin Coval Schtick

by Kevin Coval
Haymarket Books (Apr 30, 2013)
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Schtick is a tale of Jewish assimilation and its discontents: a sweeping exposition on Jewish American culture in all its bawdy, contradictory, inventive glory. Exploring—in his own family and in culture and politics at large—how Jews have shed their minority status in the United States, poet Kevin Coval shows us a people’s transformation out of diaspora, landing on both sides of the color line.


Click for more detail about Voices of the Future by Etan Thomas Voices of the Future

by Etan Thomas
Haymarket Books (Jan 15, 2013)
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"The poetic voice of his generation."—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar"Etan Thomas is breaking it down for our young minds on how to be a vital part of this challenging world we all live in. Let’s give it up for Etan."—Spike LeeBroken down by a variety of subject matter, each section begins with a selection from an interview between NBA star Etan Thomas and political sportswriter Dave Zirin, followed by a Thomas poem and the writings of talented young poets.Etan Thomas is an author, columnist, and the recipient of the 2010 National Basketball Players Association Community Contribution Award.


Click for more detail about How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Haymarket Books (Dec 05, 2012)
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"This new collection of a four-decades-old text reminds us that black women have long known that America’s destiny is inseparable from how it treats them and the nation ignores this truth at its peril."
—The New York Review of Books

"A striking collection that should be immediately added to the Black feminist canon."
—Bitch Media

"An essential book for any feminist library."
—Library Journal


Click for more detail about Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009 by Howard Zinn Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009

by Howard Zinn
Haymarket Books (Nov 27, 2012)
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Howard Zinn has illuminated our history like no other US historian. This collection of his speeches on protest movements, racism, war, and US history, many never before published, covers more than four decades of his active engagement with the audiences he inspired with his humor, insight, and clarity.

?Reading Howard’s spoken words, I feel that I am almost hearing his voice again?his stunning pitch-perfect ability to capture the moment and the concerns and needs of the audience, whoever they may be, always enlightening, often stirring, an amalgam of insight, critical history, wit, blended with charm and appeal.”
?NOAM CHOMSKY

?With ferocious moral clarity and mischievous humor, Howard turned routine antiwar rallies into profound explorations of state violence and staid academic conferences into revival meetings for social change. Collected here for the first time, Howard’s speeches?spanning an extraordinary life of passion and principle?come to us at the moment when we need them most: just as a global network of popular uprisings searches for what comes next. We could ask for no wiser a guide than Howard Zinn.”
?NAOMI KLEIN

?To hear [Howard] speak was like listening to music that you loved?lyrical, uplifting, honest… . I know he would love it for each of you to find your voice and to be heard. This book will provide you with some inspiration.”
?MICHAEL MOORE

?To read this book is to hear Howard Zinn speak again, inspiring us for the struggles from below that are our only hope for any future at all.”
?FRANCES FOX PIVEN

Howard Zinn wrote the classic A People’s History of the United States. The book, which has sold more than two million copies, has been featured in the film Good Will Hunting, and has appeared multiple times on The New York Times best-seller list.
Anthony Arnove wrote, directed, and produced The People Speak with Howard Zinn, Chris Moore, Josh Brolin, and Matt Damon, and co-edited, with Howard Zinn, Voices of a People’s History of the United States.


Click for more detail about The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World by Dave Zirin and John Wesley Carlos The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World

by Dave Zirin and John Wesley Carlos
Haymarket Books (Oct 04, 2011)
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Nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Outstanding Literary Work Autobiography/Biography Seen around the world, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute on the 1968 Olympic podium sparked controversy and career fallout. Yet their show of defiance remains one of the most iconic images of Olympic history and the Black Power movement. Here is the remarkable story of one of the men behind the salute, lifelong activist John Carlos. John Carlos is an African American former track and field athlete, professional football player, and a founding member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. He won the bronze medal in the 200 meters race at the 1968 Olympics, where his Black Power salute on the podium with Tommie Smith caused much political controversy. The John Carlos Story is his first book. Dave Zirin is the author of four books, including Bad Sports, A People’s History of Sports in the United States, and What’s My Name, Fool? He writes the popular weekly online sports column ""The Edge of Sports"" and is a regular contributor to SportsIllustrated.com, SLAM, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, where he is the publication’s first sports editor.


Click for more detail about L-vis Lives!: Racemusic Poems by Kevin Coval L-vis Lives!: Racemusic Poems

by Kevin Coval
Haymarket Books (Oct 04, 2011)
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From the poet the Chicago Tribune calls “the new voice of Chicago,” comes L-vis Lives!, a bold new collection of poetry and prose exploring the collision of race, art, and appropriation in American culture.

L-vis is an imagined persona, a representation of artists who have used and misused Black music. Like so many others who gained fame and fortune from their sampling, L-vis is as much a sincere artist as he is a thief. In Kevin Coval’s poems, L-vis’ story is equal parts forgotten history, autobiography, and re-imaginings. We see shades of Elvis Presley, the Beastie Boys, and Eminem, and meet some of history’s more obscure “whiteboy” heroes and anti-heroes: legendary breakdancers, political activists, and music impresarios.

A story of both artistic theft and radical invention, L-vis Lives! is a poetic novella on all of the possibilities and problems of “post-racial” American culture—where Black art is still at times only fully accepted in a white face, and every once in a while an “L-vis” comes along to step into the void.

i am a hero
to most. the great hope
of something other.
a complex back-story.
something other than
the business of my father.
bland’s antonym.
jim crow’s black sheep.
the forgotten son
left to rise in the darkness
among the dis
carded in the wild
of working class, single
mother hoods. a hero
who transcends
who translates the dis
satisfactions of the plains;
kids of kurt cobain,
method man amphetamine,
the odd Iowan who digs dirt
and lights beyond the pig yard,
spits nebraskan argot,
hero to the heart
land, middle brow(n) america


Click for more detail about Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader by Dennis Brutus Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader

by Dennis Brutus
Haymarket Books (Jan 01, 2006)
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“We in South Africa needed the support of the international community in our efforts to end the vicious system of racial oppression called apartheid. We had to have eloquent advocates to tell the world our story and persuade it to come to our assistance… . We had none more articulate and with all the credibility and integrity so indispensable than Dennis Brutus to plead our cause. He was quite outstanding, and we South Africans owe an immense debt of gratitude.”—Archbishop Desmond Tutu“Dennis Brutus stands as a tribune of the dispossessed. His willingness to speak out on all cases of injustice and side with the oppressed makes him the type of person we all wish to emulate. His perseverance, dedication, and eloquence have made him not only a hero for the South African freedom struggle, but for all those who struggle for social justice.”—Bill Fletcher, TransAfrica ForumThis vital original collection of interviews, poetry, and essays of the much-loved anti-apartheid leader is the first book of its kind to bring together the full, forceful range of his work.Brutus, imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela, is known worldwide for his unparalleled eloquence as an opponent of the apartheid South African regime. Since its fall, he has been a voice for justice and humanity, speaking and writing extensively on issues of debt, poverty, war, racism, and neoliberalism.Dennis Brutus is a lifelong human rights activist and poet. He was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island in South Africa and became an eloquent spokesperson for the anti-apartheid movement. He currently teaches African studies and literature at the University of Pittsburgh.Lee Sustar has written extensively on the global justice and labor movements for numerous publications. He is a member of the National Writers Union and lives in Chicago, Illinois.


Click for more detail about What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States by Dave Zirin What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States

by Dave Zirin
Haymarket Books (Jul 01, 2005)
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“Zirin is America’s best sportswriter.”—Lee Ballinger, Rock and Rap Confidential“Zirin is one of the brightest, most audacious voices I can remember on the sportswriting scene, and my memory goes back to the 1920s.”—Lester Rodney, N.Y. Daily Worker sports editor, 1936–1958“Zirin has an amazing talent for covering the sports and politics beat. Ranging like a great shortstop, he scoops up everything! He profiles the courageous and inspiring athletes who are standing up for peace and civil liberties in this repressive age. A must read!”—Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive“This is cutting-edge analysis delivered with wit and compassion.”—Mike Marqusee, author, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the SixtiesHere Edgeofsports.com sportswriter Dave Zirin shows how sports express the worst, as well as the most creative and exciting, features of American society.Zirin explores how Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl flash-time show exposed more than a breast, why the labor movement has everything to learn from sports unions and why a new generation of athletes is no longer content to “play one game at a time” and is starting to get political.What’s My Name, Fool! draws on original interviews with former heavyweight champ George Foreman, Olympian and black power saluter John Carlos, NBA basketball player and anti-death penalty activist Etan Thomas, antiwar women’s college hoopster Toni Smith, Olympic Project for Human Rights leader Lee Evans and many others.Popular sportswriter and commentator Dave Zirin is editor of The Prince George’s Post (Maryland) and writes the weekly column “Edge of Sports” (edgeofsports.com). He is a senior writer at basketball.com. Zirin’s writing has also appeared in The Source, Common Dreams, College Sporting News, CounterPunch, Alternet, International Socialist Review, Black Sports Network, War Times, San Francisco Bay View and Z Magazine.

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