- The Two Princes of Calabar
- In 1767, two "princes" of a ruling family in the port of Old Calabar, on the slave coast of Africa, were ambushed and captured by English slavers. The princes were themselves slave traders who were betrayed by African competitors--and so began their own extraordinary odyssey of enslavement. Their story, written in their own hand, survives as a rare firsthand account of the Atlantic slave experience. Sparks made the remarkable discovery of the princes' correspondence and has managed to reconstruct their adventures from it.
- Paperback September 2008
- Chutes and Ladders
- Now that the welfare system has been largely dismantled, the fate of America's poor depends on what happens to them in the low-wage labor market. In this timely volume, Katherine S. Newman explores whether the poorest families benefited from the tight labor markets and good economy in the late 1990s. More than a story of the shifting fortunes of the labor market, Chutes and Ladders asks probing questions about the motivations of low-wage workers, the dreams they have, and their understanding of the rules of the game.
- Paperback April 2008
- Staging Race
- Drawing extensively on black newspapers and commentary of the period, Karen Sotiropoulos shows how black performers and composers participated in a politically charged debate about the role of the expressive arts in the struggle for equality. Despite the racial violence, disenfranchisement, and the segregation of virtually all public space, they used America's new businesses of popular entertainment as vehicles for their own creativity and as spheres for political engagement.
- Paperback March 2008
- Clinging to Mammy
- Loving, hating, pitying, or pining for mammy became a way for Americans to make sense of shifting economic, social, and racial realities. Assertions of black contentment with servitude alleviated white fears while reinforcing racial hierarchy. McElya's stories expose the power and reach of this myth, not only in advertising, films, and literature about the South, but also in national monument proposals, child custody cases, New Negro activism, anti-lynching campaigns, and the civil rights movement.
- Hardcover October 2007
See also: All Books in SOCIAL SCIENCE.