All reading sharpens our understanding of ourselves and the societies we inhabit, but nonfiction books, in particular, deepen that understanding in a way few other mediums can. Well-researched and well-written nonfiction books, like the 17 on this list, leave us with more information than we came in with about history, politics, sleep cycles, and even the ways we socialize boys about sex and masculinity. As an added bonus, these books have the pacing and storytelling typically associated with novels, making them even more engrossing.
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It’s easy to hate on brands. Today’s mega corporations probably send their labor offshore, while likely paying seven-figure salaries to top executives and booking untold millions in profits. And when those corporations make a mistake, lambasting them becomes a kind of sport for the rest of us. Frankly, why shouldn’t it? Read more...
Brad Evans interviews Ana Lucia Araujo | December 23, 2019
This is the 35th in a series of dialogues with artists, writers, and critical thinkers on the question of violence. This conversation is with Ana Lucia Araujo, a Brazilian-born writer and professor of history at Howard University. She has worked extensively on the history and memory of the global slave trade, and has authored and edited some dozen books on the subject. Her most recent book is Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade (Bloomsbury, 2017) and her next, Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2020. Read more...
A little over a year after the board in charge of Texas public education passed a controversial high school Mexican American studies course, deliberations have resumed again — this time, for a course in African American studies.
At a State Board of Education meeting Wednesday in Austin, the board heard testimony from countless students, educators and scholars on the proposed course, with most in overwhelming support of its implementation.
During a public discussion that lasted more than two hours, Pat Hardy, a Republican board member who represents part of Dallas County, said there was no hesitation among the board as to the fate of the course. Read more...
History professor Daina Ramey Berry said throughout recorded history, people wrote about slaves like objects. But in her new book, she is trying to shift the narrative by exploring the personal lives of slaves instead.
“It bothered me,” Berry said. “So, I just committed myself to say that I’m a scholar of the enslaved, and the institution of slavery just happens to house the people I’m interested in studying.”
Berry spoke about her book Sexuality & Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas at Patton Hall on Thursday with co-editor Leslie M. Harris, a history professor at Northwestern University. Berry told the crowd of a couple dozen people that she is exploring sexual practices and intimacy in the history of slavery in her book.
“We wanted to get in spaces that often are sort of overlooked,” Berry said.
Berry said she and Harris wanted to talk about romantic intimacy in the book and not just sexual violence. Read more...
The University of Pennsylvania’s legacy is interlocked with the commodification and brutalization of enslaved people. Far from the glossy imprint of grandeur and the lore of exceptionalism lives the University's complex history of complicity in the institution of slavery, despite previous claims by University officials that Penn was not directly involved in the slave trade.
Previously, a Penn spokesperson has said that, though the University had explored potential connections to slavery "several times over the past few decades," it had never found any "direct University involvement with slavery or the slave trade." Ultimately, the University corrected the record after the student-led Penn and Slavery Project produced clear evidence of Penn’s complicity. The Penn and Slavery Project upended a denial that had been gripped tightly by school administrators for over a decade. When Brown University and other universities began to wrestle with their historical participation in slavery, Penn unequivocally stated there was “no connection” between the University and this grotesque institution. The project began in 2017 when a group of undergraduate students embarked on an independent study to see if there was a connection. Read more...
For this project on how students learn about slavery in American schools, The Washington Post asked noted historians to write an essay on aspects of slavery that are misunderstood, poorly taught or not covered at all in the nation’s classrooms. From the cruel separation of families to the resistance by enslaved people and the widespread enslavement of Native Americans, these contributions address gaps in our common knowledge about what the practice of slavery has meant for America.
In teaching the history of American slavery accurately, it is essential to teach about African Americans’ resistance to slavery. By focusing on resistance, educators reveal as false the myth that slavery was a benign institution and that enslavers were fundamentally kind. If either were true, the enslaved would not have resisted. Read more...
Pacing his classroom in north-central Iowa, Tom McClimon prepared to deliver an essential truth about American history to his eighth-grade students. He stopped and slowly raised his index finger in front of his chest.
“Think about this. For 246 years, slavery was legal in America. It wasn’t made illegal until 154 years ago,” the 26-year-old teacher told the 23 students sitting before him at Fort Dodge Middle School. “So, what does that mean? It means slavery has been a part of America much longer than it hasn’t been a part of America.”
It is a simple observation, but it is also a revelatory way to think about slavery in America and its inextricable role in the country’s founding, evolution and present. Ours is a nation born as much in chains as in freedom. A century and a half after slavery was made illegal — and 400 years after the first documented arrival of enslaved people from Africa in Virginia — the trauma of this inherited disease lingers. Read more...
When she was 6 years old, Daina Berry experienced her first moment of discrimination. In that moment, she used her knowledge of history to defend herself.
“I gave my first history lesson when I was 6 years old,” Berry said. “I was called the N-word by my neighborhood bully.”
Her mom marched her down to the bully’s house, and they told the bully about the resilience of African Americans through history. In college, a similar experience happened when a professor made derogatory comments about African Americans in class, and Berry used her historical knowledge to challenge him.
“So, those were definitely two negative experiences that made me want to become a historian,” Berry said.
At 3:30 p.m. today, July 10, in the Hall of Philosophy, Berry will present “Soul Values and American Slavery” as part of the African American Heritage House Speaker Series. Her 2017 book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, is the material she will draw upon throughout the lecture. Read more...
On April 11 Dr. Daina Ramey Berry spoke on “Slavery and the Valuation of Souls” at Worcester State University. Her talk was part of the Honors Author Series and the Sarah Ellen Sharbach Memorial Lecture.
Berry, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, discussed the costs associated with slavery and other topics covered in her 2017 book, The Price for their Pound of Flesh.
It took her 10 years to write the book and seven to find the data. In total, she discovered around 80,000 individual slave prices. In today’s money, an average enslaved person would sell for $30,000 to $300,000, depending on the calculations used. However, Berry did not just want to provide these numbers, she wanted to provide context for the data.
“You can’t talk about the numbers and not talk about the people,” she said.
She focused on enslaved people’s voices and questioned, “How did they respond to being treated as a commodity?” Berry also spoke about “soul value,” how enslaved people made sense of and how they valued their souls.
Berry gave examples of different stories of enslaved people, such as a three-day-old baby that was for sale. On average, enslaved people changed hands four times. Read more...
