June 10, 2020 - This week George Floyd is being celebrated in Houston, where he grew up. In our home state of Texas and throughout the country, protestors have raised their voices against the systematic suppression of Black voices, the excessive use of force against protestors, and the murders of named and unnamed Black people. The University of Texas Press joins these condemnations and supports the essential and urgent work of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Our publishing mission is to serve the people of Texas and knowledge seekers around the world by publishing valuable and relevant information to educate, advance scholarship, and deepen our understanding of history, current events, and contemporary cultures. Our authors reveal the connections between law enforcement along the US-Mexico border and the militarization of the police in this country. They study how cultural trauma is disproportionally inflicted upon and suffered by communities of color, the severity of which is compounded by white systems of power. And they examine the personal histories and the cultural impact of art created, transformed, and advanced by Black creators.
We believe deeply that these kinds of books, and the historical and cultural perspectives they foster, have an important role to play in the broader conversations now taking place. At the same time, we acknowledge that the book publishing industry itself, with a Black workforce of only 5 percent, has a very long way to go. Without the opportunities for meaningful and gainful entry-level jobs, barriers remain for young publishers of color. Unpaid internships; poor oversight of recruitment, promotion, and retainment; and a broad lack of equity training and accountability systems have made publishing an unwelcoming field for Black professionals.
The University of Texas Press is committed to asking difficult questions of ourselves and our institution to purposefully seek solutions. We are committed to the ongoing work of increasing staff diversity while providing professional development opportunities, training all staff to participate in an equitable work environment, and regularly reviewing our acquisitions and peer review practices to ensure broad representation. We are committed to advancing the works and expertise of Black scholars and artists, decentering whiteness when celebrating Black cultural production, and investing deliberately in our outreach to share publishing opportunities and market Black authors.
It is crucial for us to reckon with privilege, gather our peers, and actively protect and advance the rights, lives, and self-determination of Black people. In the coming weeks and months, we will be joining with others in listening, amplifying voices, sharing resources, and centering the work that must be done. In a time of uncertainty, precarity, and division, our ears and our inboxes are open.
As we continue to educate ourselves in efforts to dismantle white supremacy, we also want to do our part to elevate Black voices. We have compiled a list of our staff’s favorite books by Black authors who have made an impact on us, especially at a time when context and deep thinking are necessary.
- Affrilachia, Frank X Walker
- The Age of Phillis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
- Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
- American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assasin, Terrance Hayes
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
- The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle
- Becoming, Michelle Obama
- Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Birds of Opulence, Crystal Wilkinson
- Blackberries, Blackberries, Crystal Wilkinson
- Black Bone: 25 Years of Affrilachian Writers, edited by Bianca Spriggs and Jeremy Paden
- Black from the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Fiction, edited by Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle
- Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Cedric Robinson
- The Black Poets, Dudley Randall
- Black Skins, White Masks, Franz Fanon
- Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, Hortense Spillers
- Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, bell hooks
- Book of Hours: Poems, Kevin Young
- The Book of Night Women, Marlon James
- A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland, DaMaris B. Hill
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah
- The Bridge of Beyond, Simone Schwarz-Bart
- Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
- Broken Earth series, N. K. Jemisin
- Brown: Poems, Kevin Young
- Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, Kevin Young
- Cane, Jean Toomer
- Can't Escape Love, Alyssa Cole
- The Century Cycle (plays), August Wilson
- The Changeling, Victor LaValle
- Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, Zadie Smith
- Clotel, or the President's Daughter, William Wells Brown
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, Khalil Gibran Muhammad
- Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, Michael Twitty
- Dawn, Octavia Butler
- Delicious Foods, James Hannaham
- Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, Marisa Fuentes
- Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems, Danez Smith
- The Edna Lewis Cookbook, Edna Lewis and Evangeline Peterson
- Eight Men: Short Stories, Richard Wright
- Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, Brittney Cooper
- For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, Ntozake Shange
- Freedom as Marronage, Neil Roberts
- Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- Gather Together in My Name, Maya Angelou
- Get a Life, Chloe Brown, Talia Hibbert
- Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
- Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- The Good Lord Bird, James McBride
- The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
- Head Off and Split, Nikky Finney
- The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou
- Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon
- The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter
- Home, Toni Morrison
- Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
- How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Kiese Laymon
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
- In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era, Richard Iton
- Insurrections, Rion Amilcar Scott
- Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body Politic, Shatema Threadcraft
- Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
- Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, Frank X Walker
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
- The Known World, Edward P. Jones
- Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice, Dr. Willie Parker
- Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Saidiya Hartman
- Loving Day, Mat Johnson
- Men We Reaped: A Memoir, Jesmyn Ward
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
- No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity, Sarah Haley
- On Beauty, Zadie Smith
- On the Come Up, Angie Thomas
- The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo
- Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration, January 20, 2009, Elizabeth Alexander
- Prelude to Bruise, Saeed Jones
- The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, Daina Ramey Berry
- Pride, Ibi Zoboi
- Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields
- Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, Robin D. G. Kelley
- Rafe: A Buff Male Nanny, Rebekah Weatherspoon
- Recyclopedia, Harryette Mullen
- The Sellout, Paul Beatty
- Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Maya Angelou
- Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward
- A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
- Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
- The Stars and the Blackness Between Them, Junauda Petrus
- Sula, Toni Morrison
- Summer Lightning, Olive Senior
- Swallow the Fish, Gabrielle Civil
- Tar Baby, Toni Morrison
- Texaco, Patrick Chamoiseau
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib
- Thick: And Other Essays, Tressie McMillan Cottom
- The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
- The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
- The Venus Hottentot: Poems, Elizabeth Alexander
- The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
- We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays, Samantha Irby
- We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The works of Stuart Hall
- The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon
- You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker
- Zone One, Colson Whitehead
Media coverage and public awareness of alleged police brutality has drastically changed in the era of YouTube and Twitter. During the Civil Rights Movement, only journalists sent by publications to cover racial unrest could widely disseminate images from demonstrations like the Selma to Montgomery March. Alabama native Spider Martin was one of those journalists. The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin acquired Mr. Martin’s archive, including more than 1,000 images shot in and around Selma, which lead to our collaborative publication, Selma 1965: The Photographs of Spider Martin. We asked Ahmad Ty-ke Ward, the Head of Education at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, to comment on Spider Martin's significance and how the power to engage in this kind of activism is now in the public's hands.
Spider Martin: Image and Activism
By Ahmad Ty-ke Ward, Head of Education at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
The Selma to Montgomery March was a landmark event in American history which ultimately led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In February of 1965, twenty-seven-year-old Jimmy Lee Jackson, demonstrating with his family for the right to vote, was fatally injured in Marion (Perry County), Alabama. Jackson had placed his body between his mother and a state trooper’s club and was shot in his abdomen. His death galvanized groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Active in voter registration efforts in the Black Belt, these groups decided to stage the largest demonstration on behalf of equal voting rights for African Americans in history—a march from the Dallas County seat, Selma, to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, a distance of fifty-four miles.
James “Spider” Martin, a native of Wylam, Alabama, and an up-and-coming photographer with the Birmingham News, was sent down to Selma to cover Jackson’s death. Martin had cut his teeth on civil rights coverage during the events that happened in Birmingham in 1963. Even with that background, he could have no idea how instrumental his work would be to the Selma movement. With his camera, Spider Martin would serve as recorder, witness and moral compass for the rest of the country trying to make sense of the situation unfolding in Alabama.
“Dr. King told me the reason they were marching and protesting in Alabama was because of George Wallace, Bull Connor, Sheriff Jim Clark and Al Lingo. They all fell into the plan. Dr. King said we could march and protest in Chicago and nobody would care. But in Alabama . . .”
—Spider Martin
In 2005 Hurricane Katrina crashed into the Gulf Coast and precipitated the flooding of New Orleans. It was a towering catastrophe by any standard. Some 1,800 persons were killed outright. More than a million were forced to relocate, many for the remainder of their lives. A city of five hundred thousand was nearly emptied of life. The storm stripped away the surface of our social structure and showed us what lies beneath—a grim look at race, class, and gender in these United States.
It is crucial to get this story straight so that we may learn from it and be ready for that stark inevitability, the next time. When seen through a social science lens, Katrina informs us of the real human costs of a disaster and helps prepare us for the blows that we know are lurking just over the horizon. The Katrina Bookshelf is the result of a national effort to bring experts together in a collaborative program of research on the human costs of the disaster. The program was supported by the Ford, Gates, MacArthur, Rockefeller, and Russell Sage Foundations and sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. This is the most comprehensive social science coverage of a disaster to be found anywhere in the literature. It is also a deeply human story.
The Katrina Bookshelf will contain ten volumes to be published through the year 2017. To highlight the important work contained within each work published thus far, we asked our authors to comment on what they hope we as a nation will take away from marking the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Below are important, evidence-based lessons gleaned from years of research.
Housing
Disasters of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina reveal the deep-seated, taken-for-granted inequities that structure our everyday lives. Typically, the actions of both government and business elites in the response and recovery after a disaster reproduce and even enhance those inequities.
In the immediate chaos and sense of urgency after a massive disaster, new resources—monetary as well as human—rush in, and the regulations and processes for spending public funds that normally require responsible oversight and accountability are washed away. Priorities are set and programs implemented that most often leave out the voices, experiences, and needs of the most vulnerable—single mothers and their children, low-moderate income people, renters, the aged, the disabled, people of color—while benefitting the already privileged.
To achieve true recovery for everyone, not just gains for a few, we must include vulnerable populations and their advocates in our decision making. Listening to the stories and observing the experiences of more than 500 displaced persons and dozens of first responders, service providers, community organizers, government officials, and residents, for example, our research group, 12 scholars in 13 different receiving communities across the country, found that the central need both in the disaster area and in the diaspora was for housing. In addition to the immediate need for safe, temporary housing, people needed long-term, affordable housing that enabled them to live in community and provided transportation to employment and access to social services, health care, and schools.
Recovery for everyone depends on developing housing policy that provides faster and more effective rebuilding assistance to rental property owners –especially to those with fewer than 6 units, prioritizes consolidating kin/community networks, includes incentives for rebuilders to hire returning residents, and offers access to employment and community services.
At a more structural/political level, we must uncouple disaster-resource prioritization, allocation, and distribution processes from unchecked control by government/corporate elites. And we must include significant input from the least powerful yet most affected people in local communities and require transparency and long-term accountability in the use of public funds.
— Lynn Weber
Evacuation, Displacement, and Prolonged Recovery
I think one of the most important lessons of Katrina is related to the enduring nature of the disruption that this terrible disaster caused. “Evacuation” suggests the movement of persons from a threatened location to a temporary safe haven. That was, indeed, the experience of many residents who had to leave New Orleans but were able find safe haven, locate secure shelter, and establish a sense of routine relatively quickly.
But for tens of thousands of other survivors, Katrina’s aftermath was radically different and the disruption in their lives is ongoing. These individuals and households often made several moves in the weeks, months, and years following Katrina. They were the survivors who often bounced from a shelter, to a family member’s home, back to a shelter, to a trailer, to a motel, to temporary housing, to different temporary housing, to a homeless shelter, back to temporary housing… and on, and on, and on.
Those who experienced the most instability were also the ones who were often living in the most precarious circumstances before the storm. For them, Katrina has come to represent the disaster with no end. There is no thinking of it as a discrete event, bounded in time and space. Instead, this is the ongoing disaster that continues to ripple through their lives.
Anyone who has visited New Orleans and the rest of the battered Gulf Coast in the years since the storm would likely acknowledge that much progress has been made in restoring particular places that were badly damaged. Just as that work of rebuilding the physical infrastructure is ongoing, however, I would argue that we also need to continue to restore the lives of the people who were most affected. So on this tenth anniversary of Katrina, my hope is that we continue to focus on and invest in those most affected by the storm—both those who have returned to their former homes as well as those who permanently relocated elsewhere. If we do this, and we do it right, we will need to continue dedicating time, care, and resources to the systems that help people function effectively and live happier, healthier, more prosperous lives.
— Lori Peek
Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora
Through an extensive research network, Displaced features the work of 12 scholars who interviewed 562 displaced adults and children; 104 first responders, service providers, and community organizers; and 101 other residents in the communities where Katrina survivors landed.
Lynn Weber is Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, has for thirty years been a leader in developing the field of intersectionality—examining the nexus between race, class, gender, and other dimensions of social inequality. Her current work focuses on revealing inequalities in the process of recovery from disaster and in health outcomes.
Lori Peek is associate professor of Sociology and co-director of the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis at Colorado State University. She is author of the award-winning book Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11, co-author of Children of Katrina, and co-editor of Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora.
Race
I think Katrina was a national disgrace, but one that also presented an opportunity. As many in the mass media pointed out at the time, Katrina exposed the dark side of the United States, its poverty and historically and institutionally-rooted racism to full public view. Katrina made public what Michael Harrington famously called 'the other America'.
Amid all the suffering and hand-wringing there was the possibility to refocus a national political agenda to acknowledge and to deal with these two foundational issues in a nation that prides itself on its moral goodness, as well as its wealth and ingenuity. That opportunity was never taken and while New Orleans, the site of so much attention during the storm, may have recovered to a degree and its flood protection system strengthened, the poverty and racism remain in place.
This is a national issue, not merely a regional one and it is this issue that I would hope the current commemorations and discussion would tackle. There is a direct line to be drawn from Katrina to the current Black Lives Matter movement and with this mass movement, a new opportunity.
— Ron Eyerman
Cultural Communication
Katrina swept away the contents of every home in St. Bernard Parish, the worst hit area, where 67,000 structures were damaged or destroyed including all of those belonging to the 300-plus members of the Johnson-Fernandez family. Now, ten years later, we wonder: what does such unexpected loss and suffering have to teach us?
