Description: Across Black Spaces gathers a diverse array of essays and interviews by American philosopher George Yancy. Within this multidisciplinary framework are a series of public intellectual essays that drew international media acclaim for their spotlight on vicious racial tensions in...
Brief description: George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. Yancy has published over 250 combined scholarly articles, chapters, and interviews that have appeared in professional journals, books, and at various news sites. Yancy is known for his numerous essays and interviews in the New York Times' philosophy column The Stone, and Truthout. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including most recently Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future and In Sheep's Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (coedited with philosopher Bill Bywater. Yancy is editor of the Philosophy of Race Book Series at Bloomsbury.
Review Quotes:
"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 Reviews
"Across Black Spaces is a path-breaking volume of essays and interviews by one of the top African American philosophers. It is a masterful work, full of vivid writing, definitive analyses, and sharp critiques of domination. Yancy is clearly the leading philosopher and critic of race and racism in the nation. I predict that this highly learned work with its wit and genius will transform our perception of what is possible in a racialized society. Yancy's work is magnificent and in some places truly revolutionary." --Molefi Kete Asante, professor and chair, Department of Africology, Temple University, author of The History of Africa "Across Black Spaces is an opportunity for both those who know George Yancy's vast opus and new readers to encounter a distillation of his leading themes and reflections. Yancy is now one of our great public intellectuals and this collection of essays and interviews is an inspiring introduction to the realities of black experience in the United States." --Naomi Zack, Lehman College, CUNY "This collection features George Yancy at his best. Yancy is fearless in his quest to ground philosophy in lived experience that is both fully human and Black." --Shannon Sullivan, author of Good White People: The Problem of Middle-Class White Anti-Racism "By revealing Yancy's own experiences as a Black man, Across Black Spaces offers us a mirror in which to see our own. This is an essential resource in helping us do so." --Todd May, Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities, Clemson University "With a keen eye looking beyond the academy, George Yancy provides a treasure trove of deep insights into white-racist realities from his own and others' Black experience. A leading global philosopher whose honest critical-racism writings have led to white death threats, he offers a panoply of life-hardened understandings for building a truly democratic America and, indeed, planet earth." --Joe Feagin, Distinguished Professor, Texas A&M University, and author of Racist America "In Across Black Spaces George Yancy speaks his powerful and righteous truth on the life and death question of what it means to be Black in the USA of 2020. The most powerful philosophical work illuminates everyday experience and Yancy brilliantly grounds his analysis in realities of contemporary Black experience. Fired by a consciousness of the limits to our time on earth, Yancy has no time to display philosophical erudition for its own sake. His work will disturb, provoke and move you." --Stephen Brookfield, John Ireland Endowed Chair, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis-St. Paul "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, professor of philosophy, Smith College "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 "I used to think of George Yancy as a provocateur with a pugilist's style, throwing necessary punches in the fight against racism. After reading Across Black Spaces I now see him as a man pouring out his heart with humility and strength, urgently attempting to convince people to take a gift he is freely giving and one that we desperately need to accept. . . This is an incredibly important work and one I wish everyone in America and abroad would read." --Brian Hisao Onishi, Professor of Philosophy at Penn State