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- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowA full text database containing nearly 5,700 journals, this scholarly collection offers information in nearly every area of academic study. Provided by SUNYConnect.
- African American Experience This link opens in a new windowThe African American Experience supports research and scholarship in the field of African American Studies with a full library of works analyzing the contributions and challenges of African Americans throughout history, including the complete WPA Slave Narratives collection.
- Gale Diversity Studies This link opens in a new windowThis collection explores cultural differences, contributions and influences in our global community. This set includes 150 full-text journals. Coverage begins in 1980. Full text available.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowFull-text archive of scholarly publications in the humanities mathematics, science, and the social sciences. Dates vary but are all at least 3 years old.
- Project MUSE - Humanities Collection This link opens in a new windowContains full text articles in the humanities and social sciences as well as content from University Presses.
- Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowAn interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) and comprehensive full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. ENW titles offer additional viewpoints from those proffered by the mainstream press. 1990- current.
- Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new windowLargest full text database covering topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational & experimental methods.
- Journal of Slavery and Data PreservationThe Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation is a digital academic journal that publishes original, peer-reviewed datasets about the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants drawn from documents produced from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
- Africa Past & PresentThe podcast about African history, culture, and politics.
- Code SwitchWhat's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for! Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race head-on. We explore how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and everything in between. This podcast makes ALL OF US part of the conversation — because we're all part of the story.
- Intersectionality Matters!Intersectionality Matters! is a podcast hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory.
- The United States of AnxietyThe United States of Anxiety works to connect the present with the past. Underlying almost every cultural divide and fervent debate as we approach the 2020 election is one basic question: Who is the USA for? Who’s allowed to live here? Who has control over whose body? Who gets to vote? Who gets access to a good public education? Who sets the definition of justice?
- Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new windowOffers a variety of African American studies databases, including full-text, audio and video, across a range of History, Literature, and Performing Arts sources.
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowFilms On Demand is a comprehensive, curriculum-focused video subscription providing unlimited access to thousands of videos in 30+ subjects, including the humanities, science, business, literature, health, and more. Professors can stimulate and reinforce their lectures, and students can find inspiration and materials for their research. New content is added regularly.
- Diversity and Ethnic Studies eBook Collection This link opens in a new windowCollection includes thousands of e-books on the topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Provided by SUNYConnect.
- Blacker the Berry... by In The Blacker the Berry..., a classic yet provocative novel written during the Harlem Renaissance, a young woman must reckon with colorism in the Black community as she navigates 1920s New York City. One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry...was the first novel to openly explore prejudice within the Black community. This pioneering novel found a way beyond the bondage of Blackness in American life to a new meaning in truth and beauty. Emma Lou Brown's dark complexion is a source of sorrow and humiliation -- not only to herself, but to her lighter-skinned family and friends and to the white community of Boise, Idaho, her hometown. As a young woman, Emma travels to New York's Harlem, hoping to find a safe haven in the Black Mecca of the 1920s. Wallace Thurman recreates this legendary time and place in rich detail, describing Emma's visits to nightclubs and dance halls and house-rent parties, her sex life and her catastrophic love affairs, her dreams and her disillusions--and the momentous decision she makes in order to survive. A lost classic of Black American literature, The Blacker the Berry...is a compelling portrait of the destructive depth of racial bias in this country. A new introduction by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, author of The Sweeter the Juice, highlights the timelessness of the issues of race and skin color in America.ISBN: 9780684815800Publication Date: 1996-02-02
- Colonial Africa by African World Histories is a series of retellings of some of the most commonly discussed episodes of the African and global past from the perspectives of Africans who lived through them. Accessible yet scholarly, African World Histories gives students insights into African experiencesconcerning many of the events and trends that are commonly discussed in the history classroom.ISBN: 9780190647520Publication Date: 2018-03-09
- Cosmopolitan Africa by Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, offers an alternative interpretation of the 175 years leading up to the formal colonization of Africa by Europeans. In this brief and affordable text, author and series editor Trevor R. Getz demonstrates how Africans pursued lives, constructed social settings,forged trading links, and imagined worlds that were sophisticated, flexible, and well adapted to the increasingly global and fast-paced interactions of this period.Getz's interpretation of a "cosmopolitan Africa" is based on careful reading of Africans' oral histories and traditions, written documents, and images of or from the eighteenth century. Examining this time period from both social and cultural perspectives, Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875, helpsstudents to re-envision African societies in the time before colonization.ISBN: 9780199764709Publication Date: 2012-08-03
- Fairest by "Talusan sails past the conventions of trans and immigrant memoirs." --The New York Times Book Review "A ball of light hurled into the dark undertow of migration and survival." --Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni's Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.ISBN: 9780525561309Publication Date: 2020-05-26
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin's stunning first novel is now an American classic. With startling realism that brings Harlem and the black experience vividly to life, this is a work that touches the heart with emotion while it stimulates the mind with its narrative style, symbolism, and excoriating vision of racism in America. Moving through time from the rural South to the northern ghetto, starkly contrasting the attitudes of two generations of an embattles family, Go Tell It On The Mountain is an unsurpassed portrayal of human beings caught up in a dramatic struggle and of a society confronting inevitable change. "The most important novel written about the American Negro," says Commentary. "It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill," writes Harper's. Saturday Review praises it as "masterful," and the San Francisco Chronicle declares that this important American novel is "brutal, objective and compassionate."ISBN: 9780440330073Publication Date: 1985-11-10
- Listening to Ourselves by Contemporary African philosophy in indigenous African languages and English translation.ISBN: 9781438447445Publication Date: 2014-07-02
- Losing My Cool by A pitch-perfect account of how hip-hop culture drew in the author and how his father drew him out again-with love, perseverance, and fifteen thousand books. Into Williams's childhood home-a one-story ranch house-his father crammed more books than the local library could hold. "Pappy" used some of these volumes to run an academic prep service; the rest he used in his unending pursuit of wisdom. His son's pursuits were quite different-"money, hoes, and clothes." The teenage Williams wore Medusa- faced Versace sunglasses and a hefty gold medallion, dumbed down and thugged up his speech, and did whatever else he could to fit into the intoxicating hip-hop culture that surrounded him. Like all his friends, he knew exactly where he was the day Biggie Smalls died, he could recite the lyrics to any Nas or Tupac song, and he kept his woman in line, with force if necessary. But Pappy, who grew up in the segregated South and hid in closets so he could read Aesop and Plato, had a different destiny in mind for his son. For years, Williams managed to juggle two disparate lifestyles- "keeping it real" in his friends' eyes and studying for the SATs under his father's strict tutelage. As college approached and the stakes of the thug lifestyle escalated, the revolving door between Williams's street life and home life threatened to spin out of control. Ultimately, Williams would have to decide between hip-hop and his future. Would he choose "street dreams" or a radically different dream- the one Martin Luther King spoke of or the one Pappy held out to him now? Williams is the first of his generation to measure the seductive power of hip-hop against its restrictive worldview, which ultimately leaves those who live it powerless. Losing My Cool portrays the allure and the danger of hip-hop culture like no book has before. Even more remarkably, Williams evokes the subtle salvation that literature offers and recounts with breathtaking clarity a burgeoning bond between father and son. Watch a VideoISBN: 9781594202636Publication Date: 2010-04-29
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass's dramatic autobiographical account of his early life as a slave in America. Born into a life of bondage, Frederick Douglass secretly taught himself to read and write. It was a crime punishable by death, but it resulted in one of the most eloquent indictments of slavery ever recorded. His gripping narrative takes us into the fields, cabins, and manors of pre-Civil War plantations in the South and reveals the daily terrors he suffered. Written more than a century and a half ago by a Black man who went on to become a famous orator, U.S. minister to Haiti, and leader of his people, this timeless classic still speaks directly to our age. It is a record of savagery and inhumanity that goes far to explain why America still suffers from the great injustices of the past. With an Introduction by Peter J. Gomes and an Afterword by Gregory StephensISBN: 9780451529947Publication Date: 2005-06-07
- Native Son (Abridged) by Now an HBO Film! "If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son." - Henry Louis Gates Jr. Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America. This abridged edition of Native Son reprints the original edition from 1940. It also includes an essay by Wright, How "Bigger" was Born, as well as an afterword by John Reilly.ISBN: 9780060533489Publication Date: 2003-09-30
- Race, Class, and Gender : Intersections and Inequalities by Timely, relevant and extremely student-friendly, Andersen/Hill Collins' RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER: INTERSECTIONS AND INEQUALITIES, 10th edition, equips you with a multidimensional perspective on today's social issues. Written by two leading authorities in the field, this classic anthology uses a diverse collection of writings by a variety of scholars to demonstrate how the complex intersection of people's race, class, gender and sexuality shapes their experiences in U.S. society. Professors Andersen and Hill Collins begin each section with in-depth introductions to provide an analytical framework for understanding social inequality. Completely up-to-date, the readings cover current--and often controversial topics--including undocumented students, myths about immigrant crime, growing inequality, the role of social media in social movement mobilization, health care inequality and more.ISBN: 9781337685054Publication Date: 2019-03-12
- The Slave Community by Taking into account the major recent studies, this volume presents an updated analysis of the life of the black slave--his African heritage, culture, family, acculturation, behavior, religion, and personality.ISBN: 9780195025637Publication Date: 1979-11-01
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick "A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." --Zadie Smith One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years--due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist--Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.ISBN: 9780060838676Publication Date: 2013-03-19
- Up from Slavery by Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time In Up from Slavery, Washington recounts the story of his life--from slave to educator. The early sections deal with his upbringing as a slave and his efforts to get an education. Washington details his transition from student to teacher, and outlines his own development as an educator and founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In the final chapters of Up From Slavery, Washington describes his career as a public speaker and civil rights activist. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.ISBN: 9780140390513Publication Date: 1986-01-07
RRLC: Guide to Black History Collections
This guide showcases black history collections held by libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies throughout the City of Rochester and Monroe County.
Funding for this project came from a Vitality Grant for Preserving Historical Assets received by the Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library from the Rochester Area Community Foundation.
Please note, not all collections are open to the general public. Always call or e-mail before visiting a location. In addition, you may want to obtain a free RRLC Access card, which provides access to a large number of libraries in the area. To find out more information, please contact Pam O'Sullivan in Drake Memorial Library.
URL: https://library.brockport.edu/aas