Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies

Our History Has Always Been Contraband is a response to the latest threat to Black Studies, featuring canonical texts and authors that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history. It includes original essays by editors Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, as well as pieces by Brea Baker, Marlon Williams-Clark, and Roderick A. Ferguson detailing how we can fight back.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 220 pages
Publication date: 04 July 2023
Publisher: Haymarket Books

Our History Has Always Been Contraband  is a powerful tool for teaching and learning about Black history and culture. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the ongoing struggle for Black liberation and empowerment.
Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum. Featuring writings by David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Angela Y. Davis, Robert Allen, Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Barbara Christian, Patricia Hill Collins, Cathy J. Cohen, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Saidiya Hartman, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and many others, Our History Has Always Been Contraband excerpts readings that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history. This volume also includes original essays by editors Kaepernick, Kelley, and Taylor, elucidating how we got here, and pieces by Brea Baker, Marlon Williams-Clark, and Roderick A. Ferguson detailing how we can fight back. To read Our History Has Always Been Contraband is to be an outlaw for liberation. These writings illuminate the ways we can collectively work toward freedom for all—through abolition, feminism, racial justice. Our History Has Always Been Contraband is a powerful tool for teaching and learning about Black history and culture. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the ongoing struggle for Black liberation and empowerment.

Weight: 330g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9798888900574