UDM Libraries Book of the Week

Two nations of black America

by June Cross and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the gap between the upper and lower classes of black America and probes why it has happened. Reviewing the thirty years that have passed since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gates shows that while many blacks reaped the reward of the civil rights movement, just as many were left behind in an expanding underclass of poverty. Featuring interviews with Cornel West, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis and more.

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Barack Obama, the new face of American politics

by Martin Dupuis and Keith Boeckelman

The authors chart the rise of Barack Obama, the senator with aspirations to the toughest job in the world, but stop short of his historic victory. As a curtain-raiser to the prospective president, this is a valuable book, written in an engagingly lucid style and filled with fascinating insights into voting patters, fundraising, race relations, the role of the media in US politics and the arrival of a completely inexperienced face in the White House.

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Love & marriage in early African America

Edited by Frances Smith Foster

Love and Marriage in Early African America brings together a remarkable range of folk sayings, rhymes, songs, poems, letters, lectures, sermons, short stories, memoirs, and autobiographies. Spanning over 100 years, from the slave era to the New Negro Movement, this extraordinary collection contradicts or nuances established notions that slavery fractured families, devalued sexual morality, distorted gender roles, and set in motion forces that now produce dismal and dangerous domestic situations. A culmination of twenty years of diligent research by noted scholar Frances Smith Foster, this anthology features selections on love and courtship, marriage, marriage rituals, and family. A compelling introduction places the primary texts in their social and literary context. A bibliography offers suggestions for further reading.

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African American folktales

Edited by Thomas A. Green

“Aimed at students, educators, and general readers, this volume collects 50 folktales from the African American tradition, including fictional tales, legends, myths, and personal experience narratives, with brief introductions to each. Green (anthropology, Texas A&M U.) organizes tales by theme: origins, heroes, heroines, villains, and fools, society and conflict, and the supernatural. Tales have been modified from their original forms.”

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