On Publishing and Racial Justice

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

www.utexaspress.com

"#TurnItUP" is the Theme of University Press Week, November 12-17

Scholarly Publishers Select Theme Emphasizing Role Amplifying Unheard Voices

Happy University Press Week!

Emphasizing the critical role of university presses in providing a voice for authors, ideas, and communities beyond the scope of mainstream publishing, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) has chosen "#TurnItUP" as the theme for this year's University Press Week, which runs from November 12 through November 17. #TurnItUP was selected to celebrate the work of the UP community to find, publish, and amplify subjects, authors, and stories that might otherwise be overlooked by the book publishing community.

University presses publish approximately 14,000 books each year, including reprints. 146 presses belong to AUPresses, and 20% of that number are university presses based outside the US.

As part of University Press Week, we will be participating in a blog tour. Today, here are the books and topics covered on the tour. Today's theme is Politics.

The book world is groaning under the weight of books about politics. Yet most of them are just dressed up opinion. What university press books on politics have to offer is much better: data and serious analysis. The University of Chicago Press highlights their incredible group of recent books that, taken together, offer far more insight into what's going on with American politics than a thousand pop politics books could ever provide. Georgetown University Press  provides readers with some resources. A post from Teachers College Press will feature a list of books on politics and education. Q&A with Michael Lazzarra, author of Civil Obedience (Critical Human Rights series) about how dictatorships are supported by civilian complicity is posted from the University of Wisconsin Press.  Rutgers University Press highlights three recent politics books: The Politics of Fame by Eric Burns and the reissues of classics Democracy Ancient and Modern by M.I. Finley and Echoes of the Marseillaise by Eric Hobsbawn. UBC Press will describe their new Women’s Suffrage and the Struggle for Democracy series. Over at LSU Press, there’s a post about their new list dealing with contemporary social justice issues, pegged to Jim Crow's Last Stand and the recent state vote to ban non-unanimous criminal jury verdicts. An interview with Dick Simpson and Betty O'Shaughnessy, authors of Winning Elections in the 21st Century can be found courtesy of the University of Kansas Press. Harriet Kim provides a selection of interesting politics titles that she recently brought back into print as part of the Heritage Book Project at the University of Toronto Press. A spotlight on two recent additions to our Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South series that focus on defining the white southern identity through politics can be found at the University of Georgia Press. Last, but not least, The University of Virginia Press is publishing an updated edition of Trump’s First Year in time for second anniversary of inauguration. Their post describes the creation of that book and the preparation of a new edition covering year two, up through the recent midterms. Hope you enjoy all these great #TurnItUP posts!

www.utexaspress.com

What are the Best Gift Books for Academics?

Inside Higher Ed is running a contest on Twitter and Facebook where readers can decide the top University Press Books of 2015 that would make ideal holiday gifts. Sure, we'd be thrilled to feel the love and see all of you post our books as nominations, but this is also a great opportunity to support all our fellow university presses.

If you are looking for your next great read or trying to find the perfect gift, be sure to check out the contest hashtag, #IHEreaderschoice, to see and vote on entries. Whether you are a book lover, an author, part of a press, anyone in higher education, or someone who wants to gift a great book, this is your chance to see the best of scholarly publishing.

Nominating a Book

Anyone may nominate a book that has been published by a university press in 2015. Entries should include the #IHEreaderschoice hashtag and one or more of the following: book title, image of the book cover or link to the book¹s page on the press website or another site. The nomination period is November 30 through December 6.

Voting for a Book

To vote for a particular book, simply heart the tweet or like the Facebook post containing the nomination. You can vote for as many books as you like. The voting period is December 7-13. On December 14, Inside Higher Ed will tabulate the number of votes each book received and announce the top five titles. The book with the most votes will be the official winner.

Prizes

All who voted for the winning book will be entered into a random drawing, and five lucky voters will receive a copy of the book. The publishing press of the winning book will enjoy special Inside Higher Ed 2015 Readers¹ Choice Winner recognition in an advertising campaign and their banner ad will appear in the Daily News Update just in time for holiday gifting. The winning book will also be displayed at the Inside Higher Ed booth at the Modern Language Association annual convention January 7-10, 2016, in Austin, TX.

It Starts with Trouble

William Goyen and the Life of Writing

By Clark Davis

Selected as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015

"Ultimately, what makes It Starts with Trouble an essential read for anyone interested in literature and art is Davis’s painstaking research combined with the passion and intelligence he brings to his subject, bolstering a compelling case to reclaim Goyen’s place in American letters . . . . Like Goyen, Davis understands what writing is for. He reminds us of the stakes of art, of being an artist." 

—Los Angeles Review of Books

Nominate on Twitter! | Nominate on Facebook!

University Press Week Blog Tour: Day 5

It's the final day of the annual blog tour for University Press Week. Here is what has been posted this week:

• Monday —  Surprise!
• Tuesday — The Future of Scholarly Publishing
• Wednesday — University Press Design
• Thursday — Throwback Thursday

Today's theme is University Presses in Conversation with Authors.  

University Press Week Blog Tour: Day 3

It's the third day of the annual blog tour for University Press Week. Stayed tuned tomorrow when we share quintessential street photographer Mark Cohen's 1970s street style and his behind-the-photos commentary. Our fellow presses are featuring themed posts for each day of the week. Check out yesterday's stops here. Monday's posts are collected here. Today's theme is University Press Design.

University Press Week Blog Tour: Day 2

Welcome to the second day of the annual blog tour for University Press Week. Our fellow presses are featuring themed posts for each day of the week. Check out yesterday's stops here. Today's theme is The Future of Scholarly Publishing. Read our Editor-In-Chief's post from UP Week 2013 here.

AAUP Listening Tour: Q&A with Peter Berkery

Peter Berkery, Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses, visited the University of Texas Press offices in Austin last week as part of his Mellon-funded tour of the AAUP member presses. Peter answered some questions about what he’s learned from his “Listening Tour,” the value of university presses to their host institutions, and advice for young professionals in scholarly publishing.

Follow the Listening Tour on the AAUP Digital Digest, and check out the University of Washington Press's Q&A with Peter from an earlier Listening Tour visit.

Shiori Kawasaki, 2013

Now that you are on the second leg of your Listening Tour, what is the most surprising or interesting thing that you have learned from the Presses you have visited?


It’s arcane, but the most surprising thing I’ve learned relates to my prior experience at Oxford University Press. People generally assume that size is what most sets OUP apart from other university presses. Of course size really does matter, but I’ve come to understand that the biggest differentiator is that OUP in the US is four thousand miles away from its parent institution. Being on campus, a direct part of the ecosystem, makes all the difference—and this is a factor that comes into play for many of our members.


What do you plan to do with all of the information that you are gathering?

Originally, the Listening Tour was intended to accelerate my learning curve. While I still have a lot to learn, I’m now 12 months in and I think people are expecting me to act on my newfound wisdom! So the information I accumulate will have several purposes. First, I will be reporting back to the Mellon Foundation (who funded this second leg of the Tour). Next, I’ll be reporting back to our Board, who will use my input to inform a pending revision to the AAUP Strategic Plan. Finally, I’ll base the specific program decisions we make to further the plan in part on what I’ve heard on the road.

One topic that comes up often among university presses is how to strengthen the relationship with our universities. How can AAUP help those in the academy better understand the role that university presses play in scholarly dialogue?

This is a great question, but a challenging one. First, the direct answer: AAUP needs to strengthen its relationships with other organizations that represent various elements of the academy—administrators, faculty, librarians, lawyers, finance officers, et cetera. It pains me to say this, but we’re barely on any of their radar screens. That said, a lot of the relationship-building work has to occur at the grassroots level, by individual presses. AAUP can equip university press leaders to do this critical work through training and toolkits, but the lifting has to happen on campus.

We have heard about a newly formed AAUP Early Career Group that is connecting young professionals in scholarly publishing for career networking and idea generating. What words of advice do you have for the ‘next generation’ of scholarly publishers?

The best career advice I’ve ever received—and I’m forever trying to put it into practice more myself—came from a sales manager I worked with at Wolters Kluwer: Listen! The good Lord gave you two ears and one mouth because that’s the ratio He wants you to use them in!

Specific to scholarly publishing, I’d say listen to what’s happening in your ecosystem. It’s easy for us to get lost in the work we do—our elegant designs, our guerilla marketing strategies, the disciplines we acquire in—but more than ever we need to be mindful of how external changes are impacting the scholarly communications process we serve. Pay attention to how technology is changing research, and what that means for our authors and our customers in the future.