New Books in African American Studies

Who is Motown’s first real star? The answer, of course, is Mary Wells, singer of such classics as “My Guy,” “Bye Bye Baby,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” “You Beat Me to the Punch,” and “Two Lovers,” among others. All of these hits were released in just four years between 1960 and 1969. In Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar (Chicago Review Press, 2012) author Peter Benjaminson chronicles the life of this singular performer from her early days as a young rock ‘n’ roll diva to her last years struggling with cancer. Along the way we learn that Wells was a tireless performer. She never stopped touring, never stopped reaching for the brass ring of financial success that eluded her for much of her career. It seems she never did receive the money she felt she deserved for the songs she released for Motown, while the record company appeared to rake in a handsome profit. She left Motown in 1964, released records with a number of different labels over the next twenty-six years, and finally received a paltry $100,000 from a law suit she filed against Motown in the late eighties. Whatever the case, Benjaminson shows well how Mary Wells star still shines bright. Her songs are known by most everyone, they are ingrained in the American popular psyche. Peter Benjaminson is the author of The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard, The Story of Motown, and co-author of Investigative Reporting. He has written numerous articles for the Detroit Free Press and Atlanta Journal-Constitution among others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (Lexington Books, 2012), the second installment of his hip hop trilogy, Reiland Rabaka again discusses, in great detail, many of the essential historical, musical, aesthetical, political, and cultural movements and moments of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first African America. Building on his overtly Africana, feminist, and queer critical theoretical analyses of black movements in Hip Hop’s Inheritance (the first installment), Rabaka uses a more comparative historical eye in this book to show how (A) there are many aspects of early blues, jazz, bebop, and soul musical movements, especially as they related to other political and cultural movements of their times, that can inform us as to the place of modern rap and neo-soul movements and their relationships with other modern cultural and political movements, and (B) the modern hip hop movement (musical and otherwise) can benefit from an understanding of the ways actors in these other movements (musical and otherwise) dealt with situations similar to their own. In this way, Rabaka passionately argues, rap music can take its rightful political, aesthetic, and cultural place in the ongoing historical struggle of African Americans (men and women, straight and gay) to overthrow the bonds of oppression that have characterized their experiences in U.S. society. Reiland Rabaka is associate professor of African, African American, and Caribbean studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Humanities Program and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is also an affiliate professor in the Women and Gender studies Program and a research fellow at the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America. He is the author of ten books, including Against Epistemic Apartheid, Du Bois’s Dialectics, and the forthcoming third installment of his Hip Hop trilogy, The Hip Hop Movement. Click here to listen to my previous interview with Rabaka about Hip Hop’s Inheritance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Over the last year, this podcast has featured several authors who’ve examined the presidency of Barack Obama. John Sides, Daniel Kriess, and Enid Logan each wrote about the election campaign of the President. Michael P. Jeffries steps back and places the President into a larger theoretical conversation about race and language. Jeffries is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Welleseley College and also writes for The Atlantic magazine and The Guardian newspaper. He is the author of Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Stanford University Press, 2013) and published his first book, Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop in 2011. Jeffries peels back the debate over exactly “post-racial” life in America really is in 2013. Using the presidency of Barack Obama as a focal point, he draws from sociology, feminist theory, and political science to situate the president in long-standing debates about the state of race in America. The book is provocative, timely, and an enjoyable read Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Andra Gillespie is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America (NYU Press, 2012). She is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University and earned her Ph.D. from Yale University. Her new book focuses on the rise of one of the most well-known mayors in the country, Cory Booker. Gillespie tracks Booker’s rise through the complex politics of the city of Newark, NJ. As one of the few US cities with a history of African American mayors, Booker’s story is unique, but also illustrative. By challenging long-time Mayor Sharpe James, Booker — a newcomer to the city — confronted a deep and protective political establishment. The strategies Booker used, some effective, others less so, help Gillespie explain a larger phenomenon of the “post-racial America”. The book’s clear and personal writing make this an engaging read for political scientists and those interested in urban politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Historian Stephen Hall passionately engages in the history of nineteenth-century African American intellectual life in his first monograph, A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). This work traces the long nineteenth-century and how black historical writers evoked various themes at different moments, including ancient African history, biblical history, the paradox of American slavery, and challenges to black citizenship during the Reconstruction era. He unearths of a plethora of black historical sources in the nineteenth century in various forms, including speeches, sermons, newspapers, and literary texts, which each serve as precursors to the black historical writing of the twentieth century. His work reveals the complexities of African American intellectual history, and would be a great inclusion for undergraduate or graduate course, or for a general audience of readers who would be interested in learning more about the important history he illuminates. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) is a compendium of 22 orations delivered by African Americans over a span of over 265 years. Co-edited by frequent collaborators Richard Leeman and Bernard Duffy, both professors of communication studies, both interested in the American tradition of public address, have spotlighted the African American oral tradition in public testimonies, speeches, declarations, and jeremiads, among other possible categories of purpose in black oratory. Limited by such constraints as space and copy right law, the speeches included are those considered great, either because the speech itself is considered “famous,” like Sojourner Truth’s “A’n’t I a Woman?,” or because it is considered “the finest speech delivered by a an influential orator,” like Henry Turner’s “I Claim the Rights as a Man.” Whatever the reason for their inclusion, it’s no doubt the speeches collected are inspirational, informative, and worth studying as part of American cultural history, an oratorical history that continues to this very moment. In fact, capturing the contemporary milieu, the book also contains the first inaugural address by Barack Obama, the first U.S. president of color. Thus covering an impressive range, The Will of a People, will give readers much to think about, debate, and contemplate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Stephen Caliendo and Charlton McIlwain are the authors of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in US Political Campaigns (Temple University Press 2011). Caliendo is Professor of Political Science at North Central College and McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communications at New York University. The two present a complicated portrait of the way race has played a part in recent elections. They utilize a multi-method approach combining content analysis and experiments to analyze how race is presented in campaign advertisements and comment on the verbal and visual dimensions of race in advertising. The book can help make sense of past elections and also the way race may play a part in campaigns in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Digging up our roots seems to be the thing these days.  There are a host of genealogy resources available for anyone who cares to (re)discover their familial past.  Still, in the Americas people of African descent who want to take part in this digging encounter barriers; often there are gaps in the family histories of those whose members were bought and sold on a whim.   As she takes readers on a remarkable historical journey, Carla Peterson, author of Black Gotham:  A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale University Press, 2011), illuminates the challenges of (re)discovering family histories and along the way, readers glean much about US national history. Armed with determination, patience beyond measure, and with several doses of serendipity, Peterson, Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, takes her desire to return and find elements of her past to the archives of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  Her persistence reveals to readers a new view of nineteenth century Gotham, as Washington Irving called the city of New York.  For example, Black Gothamprovides support for social historians who would argue that the New Negro movement–often solely associated with the Harlem Renaissance–began in the ante-bellum era.  And, those interested in the education of free African Americans pre-1865 may find it fascinating that many of the 19th century’s black elite were a part of New York’s African Free School system–the Mulberry Street School, in particular.  Celebrated alumni include James McCune Smith, Alexander Crummell, Henry Highland Garnet, George Downing, the Reason brothers–Charles and Patrick–as well as Peterson’s great-great grandfather, Peter Guignon, and her great-grandfather, Philip White.  As Peterson rediscovers her paternal family’s New York history, she at times laments the obscurity to which the women in her family were relegated; she does her best to remedy this, however, as she uses facts and imagination to piece together their lives. While the book divulges new perspectives on freedom–or the lack thereof–for black New Yorkers in the nineteenth century, it also is instructive with regards to methods of research for those who seek to dress up the scraps of memory mothers, fathers, grand-aunts or grand-uncles choose to share. Needless to say, the acts of both forgetting and remembering are found not only in personal narratives of history; the journey upon which Peterson embarks also forces readers to consider how and whom institutions choose to forget and/or remember–indeed, how the nation selectively forgets and remembers. Sankofa is an Adinkra symbol of West Africa’s Akan people that means “to go back and take it.”  It describes one impetus for Dr. Carla Peterson’s journey for she indeed goes back to see; Black Gotham:  A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City attests to the fact that her insistence pays off significantly–both for her personally, and for lovers of history alike.  Read alongside a virtual archive http://archive.blackgothamarchive.org/ wherein one can find documents and images of New York’s black elite of the nineteenth century, the narrative moves one steadily along, inspiring new critical questions and intrigue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Where does rock ‘n’ roll begin? In The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll (W. W. Norton, 2011), Preston Lauterbach makes a strong case for its beginnings in the backwoods and small-town juke joints, fed by big-city racketeering, of the black American South. It begins, possibly, on Indianapolis’s Indiana Avenue where Denver Fergusun ran numbers, paid-off cops, and operated the Sunset Terrace. It begins, maybe, in Houston where Don Robey was the proprietor of the Bronze Peacock, oversaw a network of bars and taverns throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, and was a founder of the seminal Peacock Records. Maybe it began in Memphis, home of W.C. Handy, Beale Street, and the Mitchell Hotel. Or maybe it was the multitude of juke joints that littered the American South from Texas to Florida, Georgia to Chicago, in the 1930s and 40s that afforded artists such as Walter Barnes, Louis Jordan, Little Richard, and Roy Brown a series of non-stop one-nighters to ply their raunchy jumped-up versions of swing and the blues to an insatiable audience of primarily African American men and women looking for good times. In the book Lauterbach details the Chitlin’ Circuit as it was, a network of promoters, clubs, radio stations, con-men, highways and, most importantly, musicians that supported an underground artistic economy and lifestyle just beneath the surface of the mainstream music industry; a network that gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll. The Chitlin’ Circuit is Preston’s first book. He is currently working on his second, a hustler’s history of Beale Street. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Performance queen RuPaul once famously quipped that “we’re born naked; the rest is drag”–meaning everyone dons identity, performs one’s concept of self within our social networks, e.g., family, community, work. Marcia Alesan Dawkins takes RuPaul’s theory further in her new book, Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press, 2012). In it, she discusses (racial) passing as a performance that everyone, even social institutions, at one time or another, enact. In fact, she contends that we understand passing because we all might be required to do it, but also because we participate in rhetoric, ways of communicating and comprehending identity. Dawkins defines passing as “the phenomenon in which a person gains acceptance as a member of social groups other than his or her own, usually in terms of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, or disability status” (xii). She connects this to communication by discussing “passing as a series of rhetorical intersections where tropes and identifications meet texts, personalities, social situations, categories, and hierarchies” (xi). In the course of her theorizing, she distills intellectual concepts into accessible prose that every educated reader can enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies