A River of Words

The current generation of black intellectuals has produced a prodigious number of books and articles. What follows is a sample of the most notable: * “Afrocentricity” (1987), Moleffi Assante: the bible of the Afrocentric movement which attempts to prove that the source of civilization is Africa.

* “Faces at the Bottom of the Well” (1993), Derrick Bell: a New York University law professor and social critic argues that racism is a permanent fixture in American life.

* “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby” (1992), Stephen L. Carter: a Yale Law School professor tells of growing up middle-class during and after the civil rights movement.

* “Words That Wound” (1993), edited by Kimberle Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Charles R. Lawrence and Mari J. Matsuda: anthology that outlines the tenets of Critical Race Theory.

* “Notes of a Hanging Judge” (1991) Stanley Crouch: essays on literature, jazz and pop culture from a brilliant, conservative curmudgeon.

* “Tuxedo Junction” (1989), Gerald Early: an anthology of essays on everything from boxing, Motown and politics by an up-and-coming star who chairs Washington University’s African American Studies Department.

* “The New Black Aesthetic” (1989), Trey Ellis: manifesto, which appeared in Calahoo magazine, proclaiming that black artists were now free of racial limits--self-imposed or otherwise.

* “Colored People” (1993), Henry Louis Gates Jr.: a memoir of growing up in West Virginia in the ‘50s from the most recognized luminary in black intellectual circles.

* “Black Intellectuals, Jewish Tensions” (1993), Henry Louis Gates Jr.: a controversial, full-page New York Times opinion-page article on black anti-Semitism.

* “Black Looks”(1992), bell hooks: essays on feminism, politics and movies by a brilliant, confrontational enfant terrible .

* “W. E. B. du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919” (1993), David Levering Lewis: the first of two volumes on the life and times of perhaps the greatest American intellectual of the 20th Century; won Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

* “I’ve Known Rivers” (1994), Sara Lawrence Lightfoot: a study of successful black Americans by a Harvard sociologist.

* “Content of Our Character” (1991), Shelby Steele: a neoconservative academic questions the wisdom of continued dependence on affirmative action.

* “Black Popular Culture” (1993), edited by Michelle Wallace: an anthology on the dangers and joys of mass culture and its effect on the American psyche.

* “Race Matters” (1993), Cornel West: a best-selling collection of essays, including the influential “Nihilism in Black America.”

* “The Alchemy of Race and Rights” (1993), Patricia J. Williams: an autobiographical set of essays about life in law school and beyond.