Bøker utgitt av University of California Press

"Collectively, these texts open a lens to the artists' memories, artistic processes, travels, racial conflicts, artworld protests, organizational formations, feminist art histories, and philosophical orientations. Lisa Farrington has conceptualized an unprecedented anthology in the voices of Black artists and scholars who have made an impact in art, its history and criticism, and philosophical discourse worldwide."--Freida High Wasikhongo Tesfagiorgis, artist and art historian

The first book to center Black artists' voices on Black aesthetics, revealing a century of evolving relationships to race, identity, and art. What is Black art? No one has thought harder about that question than Black artists, yet their perspectives have been largely ignored. Instead, their stories have been told by intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, who defined "a school" of Black art in the early twentieth century. For the first time, Black Artists in Their Own Words offers an insightful corrective. Esteemed art historian Lisa Farrington gathers writing spanning a century across the United States, the Caribbean, and the African continent--including from renowned artists Henry Tanner, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Romare Bearden, Wifredo Lam, Renee Cox, and many more--that reveals both evolutions and equivocations. Many artists, especially during the civil rights era, have embraced Black aesthetics as a source of empowerment. Others prefer to be artists first and Black second, while some have rejected racial identification entirely. Here, Black artists reclaim their work from reductive critical narratives, sharing the motivations underlying their struggles to create in a white-dominated art world.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Situated at the crossroads of author Stacie McCormick's lived experiences as a Black birthing person, mother, and scholar, We Are Pregnant With Freedom traces Black sexual and reproductive liberation narratives through the storytelling work of those most marginalized in reproductive justice research and discourse. The book traces McCormick's loss of twin sons to stillbirth, her near-fatal experience with preeclampsia, and her subsequent reproductive justice research and advocacy work with The Afiya Center, a Black-led reproductive justice organization in Texas. Its multidisciplinary narrative shatters the silences wrought by stigma and historical erasure, ultimately proposing a new grammar of reproductive justice that can serve the people as a vehicle for community building, healing, and bodily liberation.