LEADER 00000pam a2200373 i 4500 
003    DLC 
005    20240307093510.4 
008    230815s2024    nyu    e b    001 0deng   
010      2023034918 
020    9780593299784|q(hardcover) 
040    DLC|beng|erda|cDLC|dDLC|dIMmBT 
042    pcc 
043    n-us--- 
082 00 908.996/073|223/eng/20230823 
092    973.0496073|bGAT 
100 1  Gates, Henry Louis,|cJr.,|eauthor. 
245 14 The Black box :|bwriting the race /|cHenry Louis Gates, 
       Jr. 
246 30 Writing the race 
264  1 New York :|bPenguin Press,|c2024. 
300    xxxvii, 262 pages ;|c22 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-252) and 
       index. 
520    "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 each other, 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 community formed 
       legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify 
       brutal sub-human bondage, transformed itself through the 
       word into a community whose foundational definition was 
       based on overcoming one of history's most pernicious lies.
       This collective act of resistance and transcendence is at 
       the heart of its self-definition as a "community." Out of 
       that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, 
       powerful, diverse culture formed by people who have often 
       disagreed markedly about what it means to be "Black," and 
       about how best to shape a usable past out of the materials
       at hand to call into being 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"--|cProvided by publisher. 
650  0 African Americans|xRace identity|xHistory. 
650  0 African Americans|xIntellectual life|xHistory. 
650  0 African Americans in literature. 
651  0 United States|xRace relations|xHistory.