A foundational retrospect on how African Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves throughout the country's history. "The Black Box: Writing the Race" is the story of Black self-determination in America through the lens of the writers who preceded them. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, these writers used words to create a viable world – a "home" – for Blacks destined to live in a fiercely racist society.

This community shaped and transformed itself against oppression and lies, a collective act of resistance and transcendence that lies at the heart of its self-determination. From this uncertain ground has blossomed a resilient, creative, powerful, and diverse culture, shaped by people who often radically disagreed on what it means to be 'Black', and on how to forge a usable past out of available materials in order to call into existence a more just and equitable future.

This is the epic story of how, through essays and speeches, novels, plays, and poems, a long line of creative thinkers revealed the descriptions of – and resisted the conception – of the black box assigned to this "nation within a nation", from its founding to the present day. It is a book that documents the compelling saga of the formation of a people.

Pages: 304, Dimensions: 14.4x14.4cm