Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature

Read more about the contributors to this fantastic volume of work

“Kevin Powell is pushing to bring, as he has so brilliantly done before, the voices of his generation: the concerns, the cares, the fears, and the fearlessness. Step into a World is a kaleidoscope into the world not bound by artificial constructs like nation. John Coltrane recorded ‘Giant Steps,’ which is a riff on the sight and sounds in his muse. Powell plays the computer with equal astuteness.” —Nikki Giovanni

From across the globe, here is a historic gathering of some hundred of the greatest black writers of this era. Bringing together emerging literary talent along with established and award-winning writers like Booker Prize—winner Ben Okri, Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, Paul Beatty, Joan Morgan, Sarah Jones, and Hilton Als, Step into a World is a provocative anthology that offers a window into crucial issues of post—Civil Rights and post colonial black life.

Compiled by Kevin Powell (whom famed scholar Michael Eric Dyson called "one of America’s most brilliant young cultural critics"), this extraordinary collection contains a range of fiction, poetry, essays, and criticism-some never before published-along with e-mails, letters, manifestos, and the new genre of hip-hop journalism, here in book form for the first time. Indeed, hip-hop music, culture, and politics permeate Step into a World, as many of the writers have been affected in some way by the biggest pop cultural phenomenon of the past twenty-five years.

Hailing from the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, and Africa, these luminary writers present poignant and powerful thoughts on racial identity, gender oppression, homophobia, classism, Tiger Woods, the black intelligentsia, Oprah’s Book Club, and the Beat Generation, as well as blunt assessments on the crack epidemic, police brutality, postintegration America, and the future state of Africa.

The first major collection of contemporary black writing in nearly a decade, Step into a Worldd includes writers born as early as 1957 and as recently as 1977. The result is an anthology full of energy and stylistic variations, and it is an incredible journey into the richly textured world of the new black literature

“Those of us who pay attention were aware that the younger generation of blackwriters was being smothered by the anointment of talented tenth Divas and Divuses, and their commercial accommodationist ‘Fourth Renaissance. ’This anthology is indeed a breakthrough! It combines the boldness and daring of hip-hop with the intellectual keenness of a Michele Wallace or a Clyde Taylor.” –Ishmael Reed

“In a culture where videos, the Internet, and other high-tech communication is being consumed like the latest mind-altering drug, how does great literature grow and survive? These writers will answer that all-important question. This anthology provides a clue, a hint, as to where we might be going. They are resisting all this vacant, empty-minded nothingness. Read them. Listen to them. If you don’t, you do so at your peril.” –Quincy Troupe