by W. E. B. Du Bois
Verso
09/16/2021, paperback
SKU: 9781839764073
A new edition of the classic work of Black history and politics with a new introduction by award-winning poet and novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.
"I have been in the world, but not of it," begins this searing and passionate book by legendary scholar W.E.B. Du Bois. A continuation of his celebrated work The Souls of Black Folk, Darkwater describes the devastation of segregation, slavery, and the global color line that veiled half the world's people in shadow. First published in 1920, Darkwater gives voice to the rising power of the "darker races" around the world; it frames Africa's blistering indictment of Europe in a study of the curious and twisted souls of white folk; and it includes Du Bois's landmark essay "The Damnation of Women," in which he explores gender inequality and the double burdens forced onto black women.
Combining essays and analysis with poetry, allegory, and short fiction, Darkwater is an angry and eloquent argument that, as Du Bois writes, "a belief in humanity is a belief in colored men." This beautiful edition includes a new introduction from award-winning poet and novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and a historical preface by historian Manning Marable.
Reviews:
"Du Bois essentially defined black America in the 20th century with his notion of 'double consciousness' -- the idea that African Americans experience everything in this world both as Americans and as black people. Scholars have come up shaky in their efforts to update Du Bois's simple, but ingenious formula." -- Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me
"[Du Bois was] the greatest of the early civil-rights leaders, a figure of towering significance in American politics and letters... Remembered for his single-minded commitment to racial justice and his capacity to shape black consciousness, Du Bois used language and ideas to hammer out a strategy for political equality and to sound the depths of the black experience in the aftermath of slavery." -- Stuart Hall
About the Author:
W.E.B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. He was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. He is the author of numerous books, including the seminal The Souls of Black Folk and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America.