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Freedom and Apocalypse, for example, traces the idea that black Americans are a chosen people who will, by some violent means, overthrow the white man's tyranny.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe essays culminate in an examination of the life and work of Richard Wright. Baker's treatment of Wright as a black American artist who recorded the black man's shift from an agrarian to an urban setting places Wright and the tradition of black literature and culture in a fresh perspective.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49559951671569,"sku":"GOR013371708","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52480302547217,"sku":"NLS9780813913018","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813913012.jpg?v=1751296955"},{"product_id":"black-british-cultural-studies-book-houston-a-baker-jr-9780226144825","title":"Black British Cultural Studies","description":"From Stuart Hall's classic study of racially-structured societies to an interview by Manthia Diawara with Sonia Boyce, a leading figure in the black British arts movement, the papers included here have transformed cultural studies through their sustained focus on the issue of race. Much of the book centres on black British arts, especially film, ranging from an historical overview of black British cinema to an evaluation of the costly burden on black artists of representing their communities. Other essays consider such topics as race and representation, and colonial and post-colonial discourse. This anthology should be of use as a resource for those interested in cultural studies. It also has much to offer students of anthropology, sociology, media and film studies, and literary criticism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49568005456145,"sku":"GOR005783946","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49665160282385,"sku":"GOR009643989","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226144828.jpg?v=1751133154"},{"product_id":"black-studies-rap-and-the-academy-book-houston-a-baker-9780226035215","title":"Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy","description":"In this explosive book, Houston Baker takes stock of the current state of Black Studies in the university and outlines its responsibilities to the newest form of black urban expression—rap. A frank, polemical essay, Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy is an uninhibited defense of Black Studies and an extended commentary on the importance of rap. Written in the midst of the political correctness wars and in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Baker's meditation on the academy and black urban expression has generated much controversy and comment from both ends of the political spectrum.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49643875041553,"sku":"GOR005398115","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51321021071633,"sku":"CIN0226035212G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226035212.jpg?v=1753786193"},{"product_id":"journey-back-book-houston-a-baker-jr-9780226035352","title":"The Journey Back","description":"\"Professor Baker offers the richest analysis we have of black literature in its full cultural context. A superb literary critic, a sophisticated student of culture and society, Baker is himself a very talented writer, deeply engaged in the literary-cultural 'journey' he describes. The result is a major work of interdisciplinary scholarship and humanistic criticism which will remain for years to come an authoritative treatment of the subject. The Journey Back is a landmark not only in the study of black literature but in American studies in general. No one interested in our culture can afford to ignore it.\"—Sacvan Bercovitch, Columbia University","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49797569380625,"sku":"CIN0226035352G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226035352.jpg?v=1751133111"},{"product_id":"blues-ideology-and-afro-american-literature-book-houston-a-baker-9780226035369","title":"Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature","description":"Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Baker offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its vernacular level.  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Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its \"vernacular\" level. 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Baker Jr. condemns those black intellectuals who, he believes, have turned their backs on the tradition of racial activism in America. These individuals choose personal gain over the interests of the black majority, whether they are espousing neoconservative positions that distort the contours of contemporary social and political dynamics or abandoning race as an important issue in the study of American literature and culture. Most important, they do a disservice to the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and others who have fought for black rights.  In the literature, speeches, and academic and public behavior of some black intellectuals in the past quarter century, Baker identifies a \"hungry generation\" eager for power, respect, and money. Baker critiques his own impoverished childhood in the \"Little Africa\" section of Louisville, Kentucky, to understand the shaping of this new public figure. He also revisits classical sites of African American literary and historical criticism and critique. Baker devotes chapters to the writing and thought of such black academic superstars as Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele; Yale law professor Stephen Carter; and Manhattan Institute fellow John McWhorter. His provocative investigation into their disingenuous posturing exposes what Baker deems a tragic betrayal of King's legacy.  Baker concludes with a discussion of American myth and the role of the U.S. prison-industrial complex in the \"disappearing\" of blacks. Baker claims King would have criticized these black intellectuals for not persistently raising their voices against a private prison system that incarcerates so many men and women of color. To remedy this situation, Baker urges black intellectuals to forge both sacred and secular connections with local communities and rededicate themselves to social responsibility. As he sees it, the mission of the black intellectual today is not to do great things but to do specific, racially based work that is in the interest of the black majority.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50477537001745,"sku":"CIN0231139659G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53625263751441,"sku":"NIN9780231139656","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231139659.jpg?v=1751389043"},{"product_id":"i-don-t-hate-the-south-book-houston-a-baker-jr-9780195326550","title":"I Don't Hate the South","description":"I Don't Hate The South's central claim is that the South is a laboratory, metaphor, and proving ground for American polity as a whole. With incisive wit, scrupulous literary and cultural analysis, and vivid portraits of members of his own family, the author provides captivating reading and an object lesson on the United States' regional and national interdependence.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50696939241745,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50696940945681,"sku":"NGR9780195326550","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52351290769681,"sku":"NLS9780195326550","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52734476615953,"sku":"NIN9780195326550","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195326555.jpg?v=1750843714"},{"product_id":"i-don-t-hate-the-south-book-houston-a-baker-jr-9780195084290","title":"I Don't Hate the South","description":"I Don't Hate The South takes its title from the famous declaration by Faulkner's character Quentin Compson in the novel Absalom, Absalom!. The book traces Baker's own ambivalent relationship to the South and its various protocols of family and black expressive cultural independence through a memoiristic recounting of the author's various academic posts, family dramas, travels, and engagements with that most famous of southern authors, William Faulkner as well as the black expressive \"experimentalists\" Percival Everett and Ralph Ellison. I Don't Hate The South's central claim is that the South is a laboratory, metaphor, and proving ground for American polity as a whole. W. E. B. Du Bois noted: \"As the South goes, so goes the nation!\" Houston Baker sets out to show the present-day wisdom of Du Bois's observation in a post-Hurricane Katrina moment of national family crisis. With incisive wit, scrupulous literary and cultural analysis, and vivid portraits of members of his own family, the author provides captivating reading and an object lesson on the United States' regional and national interdependence.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50999769792785,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999772217617,"sku":"NIN9780195084290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52477574676753,"sku":"NLS9780195084290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195084292.jpg?v=1751164202"},{"product_id":"critical-memory-book-houston-a-baker-jr-9780820322407","title":"Critical Memory","description":"From the lone outcry of Richard Wright's Black Boy to the chorusing voices of Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, this work examines the second half of the 20th century to assess the challenges to African American cultural and intellectual life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740304568593,"sku":"NIN9780820322407","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780820322407.jpg?v=1763482419"},{"product_id":"workings-of-the-spirit-book-houston-a-baker-9780226035222","title":"Workings of the Spirit","description":"Turning on inspired interpretations of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Ntozake Shange, Workings of the Spirit weighs current critical approaches to black women's writing against Baker's own explanation of the founding, theoretical state of Afro-American intellectual history. \"Brilliant, and tenderly riveted to gratitude as an indispensable facet of analysis, Houston Baker arrives, yet again, bearing the loveliest flowers of his devotion and delight: thank God he's here!\"--June Jordan","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53336307826961,"sku":"NGR9780226035222","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780226035222.jpg?v=1774307668"},{"product_id":"turning-south-again-book-houston-a-baker-9780822326953","title":"Turning South Again","description":"Offers an account of the struggle for black modernism in the United States. 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