Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher

Across Black Spaces gathers and builds on a diverse array of essays and interviews by American philosopher and leading public intellectual George Yancy. Within this multidisciplinary framework are works from The New York Times, The Guardian, and other major media outlets which have drawn international acclaim for their spotlight on vicious racial tensions in American academia and society at large. With this collection of revised and updated works, Yancy engages a vast scope of social, political, historical, linguistic, and philosophical themes that together illustrate what it means to be Black in America. Four sections of the book engage, first, moral outrage at contemporary ethical crises; second, the search for identity and value of vulnerability; third, the history and present values of Black and Africana philosophy; and fourth, the essential role of African American language in understanding Black lived experience. Representing twenty years of persistent inquiry and advocacy, Across Black Spaces celebrates Yancy's undeniable importance in American intellectual progress and essential social change. Review In this collection of interviews and essays, which is divided into four parts, Yancy (Emory Univ.) engages in a timely conversation on racism with several well-known scholars and academic journalists. His interviews and essays in parts 1 and 2 contextualize his reflections, as well as those of his interlocutors, on hate mail (including a racist death threat Yancy received) with the dual aim of exposing racism and shedding light on the white backlash engendered by his teaching. Parts 3 and 4 are, respectively, devoted to biographical sketches of three historically important Black philosophers (Thomas Nelson Baker, Gilbert Haven Jones, and Joyce Mitchell Cook) and to conversations with Anita L. Allen on Black women philosophers, Brad Evans on hate speech, Robert L. Williams on Ebonics, and Geneva Smitherman on Black language and resistance. . . Summing Up: Recommended. All levels.--CHOICE For years, George Yancy has been a truth-telling voice of courage, wisdom, and attempted reconciliation in the racially polarized public sphere. At a time when racial issues have become more central than in decades to the national conversation, his philosophical insight is needed more than ever before. This invaluable collection of articles, interviews, sketches of pioneering black thinkers, and autobiographical reflections, will provide, for those who do not yet know him, a wonderful introduction to his work.--Charles W. Mills, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, The Graduate Center, CUNY Speaking one's truth has been indicative of many efforts to transgress the dehumanizing epistemic and existential boundaries imposed on black being by virtue of various vicious construals of black embodiment as somehow bereft of the sensitivities and sensibilities of full human subjectivity. Here in Across Black Spaces, George Yancy splendidly joins, converses with, and commends a chorus of black figures who traverse the borders of disciplinary domains and genres in ways that exemplify and bear witness to the expansive terrain of critical black thought.--A. Todd Franklin, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies, Hamilton College Bold, brave, and bracing. This welcome compilation of George Yancy's widely published work forcefully weaves together indictments of white supremacy, tributes to courageous builders of resistance to its violence, and reflections on the role of Black philosophy in deepening our understanding of what philosophy is and does. Exploring with many interlocutors the rich cultural spaces African Americans have created and sustained in the face of the terrors of white supremacy, Yancy helps us see just how African American philosophy, and by extension, the activity of philosophy more generally, arise out of the complex lived spaces to which they are a response.--Elizabeth V. Spelman