The Black Intellectual Tradition

This book is an important read in today’s America. While some of the contributors and ideas were familiar to me from other reading I have done, this volume broadened my horizons. This is worthy and important. Pick it up.

My thanks to NetGalley.com for a copy of this collection of academic essays prior to its publication. I have already recommended this collection to my college's institution for purchase. Although this book will likely be of most interest to scholars and students working within African American Studies programs, it should be read by anyone who wants to deepen their reading around anti-racism, educational theory or history. Like many other white readers, I've tried to diversify my reading list over the last few years, but this has been the first book I've read that challenged me to consider a broader intellectual tradition in the United States. Now I have a much broader and more scholarly set of texts that I know I need to read.

The editors preface each section with helpful notes that contextualize each contribution. The book has four sections with between two and four essays in each section: scholarship and education, ants and letters, social activism and institutions, and identity and ideology. The chapters on neo-slave narrative and black women's memoirs were most interesting to me. but I am coming to the book from an English studies perspective.

An interesting and thorough collection of academic essays covering the breadth of "black" thought in America during the 20th century. This book is an invaluable resource not just for the insightful essays, which do a great job contextualizing the featured thinkers and lines of thought within the larger intellectual landscape, but also for introducing the reader to new thinkers and reading lists. This book is a worthy addition to any academic library.