Teaching Black

Ana-Maurine Lara (Editor) Ana-Maurine Lara is a national award-winning novelist, poet, and scholar. She is the author of Erzulie’s Skirt, Kohnjehr Woman, and When the Sun Once Again Sang to the People. Her academic books include Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty and Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic. Lara’s work focuses on questions of Black and Indigenous freedom.drea brown (Editor) drea brown is a poet-scholar and author of dear girl: a reckoning, winner of the Gold Line Press 2014 chapbook prize. brown’s forthcoming book, Conjuring the Haint: The Haunting Poetics of Black Women is concerned with haunting and grief, and the impact of these states of being on Black women’s lives and literature.

For those who know the perils of teaching Black literature while living Black, the essays assembled in Teaching Black are the balm in Gilead. With honesty, humility, and humor, these authors put their bodies on the line to reflect upon what it means to privilege Black texts—indeed Black life—in an anti-Black world. Every teacher should read this book.