#TheHistorySoundtable III: Recent History Books by Black Women

By Keisha N. Blain January 31, 2017 Comments Off

Here is a list of recent books written by black women scholars. This list is the second installment of #TheHistorySoundtable list on AAIHS by Sowande’ Mustakeem and Keisha N. Blain. The books on this reading list shed light on how black women scholars are shaping and defining the fields of United States history, African history, and African Diaspora History. We encourage educators to incorporate these works into their syllabi for fall courses, and invite these scholars to their campuses to share their exciting research with colleagues and students. This list is not meant to be exhaustive and represents the second of a new recurring series on AAIHS, which will highlight works written by black women historians. *Are you a black woman scholar who has written a new book or has a book scheduled for publication within the next 2 years? Did we miss your book in this list and the previous one? Please send us the details via this submission form.

Berry, Mary Frances. Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy (Beacon Press, 2016).
Berry, Mary Frances. We Are Who We Say We Are: A Black Family’s Search for Home Across the Atlantic World (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Berry, Mary Frances. Power in Words: The Stories behind Barack Obama’s Speeches, from the State House to the White House with Josh Gottheimer (Beacon Press, 2010).
Collier-Thomas, Bettye. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).
Cooper, Brittney. Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press, 2017).
Daut, Marlene. Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789-1865 (Liverpool University Press, 2015).
Flynn, Karen. Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora (University of Toronto Press, 2011).
Gray, LaGuana. We Just Keep Running the Line: Black Southern Women and the Poultry Processing Industry (LSU Press, 2014).
Green, Monica H. Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death (Arc Medieval Press, 2015).
Hamlin, Francoise N. and A.Y. Jimoh. These Truly are the Brave: An Anthology of African American Writings on War and Citizenship (University Press of Florida, 2015).
Harris, Duchess. Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Obama (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).
Harris, Duchess. Black Lives Matter (ABDO, 2016).
Harris, Duchess. Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA (ABDO, 2016).
Jones, Martha. Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Jones-Branch, Cherisse. Arkansas Women: Their Lives and Times (University of Arkansas Press, forthcoming).
Jones-Branch, Cherisse.“Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps”: Rural Black Women’s Activism in Arkansas, 1914-1965 (University of Arkansas Press, forthcoming).
Kossie-Chernyshev, Karen. Angie Brown, A Jim Crow Romance (Outskirts Press, 2017).
Kossie-Chernyshev, Karen. Recovering Five Generations Hence: The Life and Writing of Lillian Jones Horace (Texas A&M University Press, 2013).
Lomax, Tamura. Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Black Religion and Black Popular Culture (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
McKinley, Michelle A. Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Mitchell, Koritha. Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2011).
Morris, Tiyi. Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (University of Georgia Press, 2015).
Moyd, Michelle R. Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers,, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism (Ohio University Press, 2014).
Pruitt, Bernadette. The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941 (Texas A&M University Press, 2013).
Robertson, Ashley M. Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State (The History Press, 2015).
Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (Harper Collins, 2016).
Williamson, Terrion L. Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life (Fordham University Press, 2016).
Winters, Lisa Ze. The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic (University of Georgia Press, 2016).

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Keisha N. Blain

Keisha N. Blain is a historian of the 20th century United States with broad interdisciplinary interests and specializations in African American History, the modern African Diaspora, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Follow her on Twitter @KeishaBlain.