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Title details for The Black Box by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Available

The Black Box

Writing the Race

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Dominic Hoffman
Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
A New York Times Notable Book
“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” — Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste
“This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.”
—The New York Times
A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with one another, over the course of the country’s history.
Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s, legendary Harvard introductory course in African American studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. 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 livable world, a home, for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society.
It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a group formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal subhuman bondage transformed itself through the word into a community joined in overcoming one of history’s most pernicious lies. Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture of people who have often disagreed markedly about what it means to be Black, and about how best to use the past to create 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 has unveiled the contours of—and resisted confinement in—the black box inside which this nation within a nation has been assigned, willy-nilly, from the nation’s founding through to today. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a people.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 19, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593829127
      • File size: 205237 KB
      • Duration: 07:07:34

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      What makes Dominic Hoffman such a fine narrator is the clarity of his delivery and his vocal agility. He sounds like he is inside Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s, brilliant mind, and he moves adroitly from the author's knowing perspective to "signifying" in the style of African American folklore. His voice is conversational and his tone thoughtful as he takes the listener from the works of eighteenth-century poet Phyllis Wheatley to the abolitionist polemics of Frederick Douglass and sociological perspectives of W.E.B. Du Bois. Through this work, subtitled "Writing the Race," historian, filmmaker, and PBS host Gates gives the listener a distinct frame through which to view African American history. This fine audiobook adds to the Harvard historian's exceptional body of work. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      Starred review from June 1, 2024

      Renowned historian and PBS host of PBS's Finding Your Roots, Gates (The Black Church) writes this account of his search for a fresh conception of Black identity that goes beyond checking off "the Black box" on applications. Award-winning narrator Dominic Hoffman provides a conversational yet thoughtful presentation of Gates's work. Drawing on his lectures to Harvard undergraduates about literary greats W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, Gates shows how Black writers have defined and redefined the Black community for generations, contributed to the civil rights movement, and continued to influence ongoing efforts to achieve more artistic and political freedom. In discussing what it means to navigate society with one label or another, Gates also envisions the world his biracial granddaughter will experience. Noting that there are 47 million Black people in the U.S., and thus 47 million ways to be Black, he argues that no single box can capture the layers of culture, history, and race within Black society. VERDICT Listeners who seek to engage in today's debates about school curricula, inclusive perspectives on U.S. history, and forming a shared national culture will find this powerfully argued and narrated work an invaluable resource.--Sharon Sherman

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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