15 Books Published by Temple University Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore,is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines.Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.

What freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era

Since stepping down as the 100th President of the American Sociological Association, Patricia Hill Collins has been lecturing extensively at universities and at private and public organizations about the role of the intellectual in public culture and how well intellectuals communicate questions about contemporary social issues to the larger public. This book is a collection of those lectures, along with new and (a few) previously-published essays.

The “invisible men” of sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield’s urgent and timely No More Invisible Man are African American professionals who fall between extremely high-status, high-profile black men and the urban underclass. Her compelling interview study considers middle-class, professional black men and the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities they encounter in white male-dominated occupations. No More Invisible Man chronicles these men’s experiences as a tokenized minority in the workplace to show how issues of power and inequality exist - especially as it relates to promotion, mobility, and developing occupational networks. Wingfield’s intersectional analysis deftly charts the ways that gender, race, and class collectively shape black professional men’s work experiences.

Look, a White! returns the problem of whiteness to white people.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s adaptation of Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violent resistance is the most visible example of the rich history of ties between African Americans and India. In "The End of Empires", Gerald Horne provides an unprecedented history of the relationship between African Americans and Indians in the period leading up to Indian independence in 1947. Recognizing their common history of exploitation, Horne writes, African Americans and Indians interacted frequently and eventually created alliances, which were advocated by W.E.B. Du Bois, among other leaders. Horne tells the fascinating story of these exchanges, including the South Asian influence on the Nation of Islam and the close friendship between Paul Robeson and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Based on extensive archival research in India, the United States and the United Kingdom, "The End of Empires" breaks new ground in the effort to put African American history into a global context.

At the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith and his teammate John Carlos came in first and third in the 200-metre sprint. In this text, Smith explains why, as they received their medals, both men raised a black-gloved fist, creating an image that has symbolized the conflicts of race, politics, and sports.

Focused on the region as a whole and drawing from archives in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana, St. Kitts, Antigua, the U.S. and U.K., this book details the region’s impact on the U.S. (particularly  on Jim Crow), as it charts the British Empire’s retreat in the face of a challenge from Washington.

A provocative analysis of the new contours of Black nationalism and feminism in the context of the changing politics of race in America.

The first anthology to focus exclusively on queer readings of Spanish, Latin American, and US Latina lesbian literature and culture, Tortilleras interrogates issues of gender, national identity, race, ethnicity and class to show the impossibility of projecting a singular Hispanic or Latina Lesbian. Examining carefully the works of a range of lesbian writers and performance artists, including Carmelita Tropicana and Christina Peri Rossi, among others, the contributors create a picture of the complicated and multi-textured contributions of Latina and Hispanic lesbians to literature and culture. More than simply describing this sphere of creativity, the contributors also recover from history the long, veiled existence of this world, exposing its roots, its impact on lesbian culture, and, making the power of lesbian performance and literature visible.

This new edition of "The Afrocentric Idea" boldly confronts the contemporary challenges that have been launched against Molefi Kete Asante’s philosophical, social, and cultural theory. By rendering a critique of some postmodern positions as well as the old structured Eurocentric orientations discussed in the first edition, this new edition contains lively engagements with views expressed by Mary Lefkowitz, Paul Gilroy, and Cornel West. Expanding on his core ideas, Asante has cast "The Afrocentric Idea" in the tradition of provocative critiques of the established social order. This is a fresh and dynamic location of culture within the context of social change. Molefi Kete Asante is Professor and chair of African-American Studies at Temple University, and author of several books, including "African Intellectual Heritage" (with Abu S. Abarry, Temple) and "The Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans".

Margaret, Charlie, Virginia, Tracy, and Laquita are all drug users who are involved in regular criminal activity: prostitution, burglary, shoplifting, robbery, drug selling, petty theft, and various kinds of fraud. This title describes their lives, how they came to be where they are, and where they hope to go.

Organized by major themes such as creation stories, and resistance to oppression this collection gather works of imagination, politics and history, religion, and culture from many societies and across recorded time. Asante and Abarry marshal together ancient, anonymous writers whose texts were originally written on stone and papyri and the well-known public figures of more recent times whose spoken and written words have shaped the intellectual history of the diaspora. Within this remarkably wide-ranging volume are such sources as prayers and praise songs from ancient Kemet and Ethiopia along with African American spirituals; political commentary from C.L.R. James, Malcolm X, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Joseph Nyerere; stirring calls for social justice from David Walker, Abdias Nacimento, Franzo Fanon, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Featuring newly translated texts and documents published for the first time, the volume also includes an African chronology, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. With this landmark book, Asante and Abarry offer a major contribution to the ongoing debates on defining the African canon. Author note: Molefi Kete Asante is Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Temple University and author of several books, including "The Afrocentric Idea" (Temple) and "The Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans". Abu S. Abarry is Assistant Chair of African American Studies at Temple University.

Praise For Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within A Tradition…

“In this illuminating study Joanne Braxton shows the continuity and tradition in the writing of Afra-American women. An important work for teachers and students of Literature, History, and Women’s Studies.” —Gerda Lerner

“Braxton’s book is scrupulously researched. She has been creative in finding resources and courageous in analyzing and interpreting her finds. This is the word of a diligent mind. The material is mountainous, yet the book sings. Braxton is a poet. Thank goodness.” —Maya Angelou

“Joanne Braxton’s essays on black women’s autobiographies delineate and illuminate the personal and historical dimension of an important literary tradition. Emphasizing the distinct character of Afra-American women’s experience and relations with each other, she ground their writing of their lives in the struggles and triumphs of the lives they actually led.” —Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Many straight Americans would never embrace homosexuals as neighbors, co-workers, or friends. Still less would they accept as equals those transgendered individuals who work the streets to provide themselves with drug money.

This book seeks to change that perception. It celebrates the lives of Shontae, China, Keisha, Detra, and Monique, five Afro-American gay hustlers who struggle to survive and to maintain a life of dignity and value in the face of their drug use and criminal activity. As individuals they vary in terms of background, the manner in which they entered the transgendered world, and the nature of their initiation into the drug subculture. None of them has escaped the ravages of urban decline, crime, drugs, and poverty that accompany life in an inner city, but by the same token, none of them has capitulated to the stresses with which they live.

It is impossible to read these accounts and not come away emotionally drained. As Monique explains, their lives take place in a world of chances. “You take a chance on living or dying, on being hurt or not being hurt, a chance on finding a friend or finding an enemy.” It is from this world that their voices speak so eloquently about their families, hustling, sexuality, sexual abuse, friendship, and intimacy.

By letting these women speak, Leon E. Pettiway evokes questions and encourages discussion and a re-evaluation of those who are labeled as deviant. Pettiway reaches beyond academic convention to offer a view with depth and emotion that mere statistics could never provide. While the poverty and often destructive lifestyle of these women may be gut-wrenching, their experiences reveal joy, pain, and the profound strength of the human spirit with which we can all identify. These lives have much to teach us about ourselves and those we label as “other.”