From the Book - First edition.
Part I. Reflections: Letter from a region in my mind / James Baldwin
The color fetish / Toni Morrison
Black like them / Malcolm Gladwell
Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The color of injustice / Kelefa Sanneh
Part II. Personal histories. Quilts / Andrea Lee
Putting myself together / Jamaica Kincaid
American inferno / Danielle Allen
The yellow house / Sarah Broom
Test case / Vinson Cunningham
Part III. The political scene: Reaching for the moon / Jervis Anderson
Saint Pauli / Kathryn Schulz
Letter from Jackson / Calvin Trillin
Letter from Selma / Renata Adler
The charmer / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Mourning for whiteness / Toni Morrison
The southern strategist / Jelani Cobb
Part IV. Life and letters: Phillis Wheatley on trial / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
A society of one / Claudia Roth Pierpont
Hughes at Columbia / Charlayne Hunter-Gault
King of cats / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Ghosts in the house / Hilton Als
Secret histories / Alexis Okeowo
Part V. Onward and upward with the arts: Voice of the century / Alex Ross
The colossus / Stanley Crouch
American untouchable / Emily Nussbaum
Brother from another mother / Zadie Smith
Radical alienation / Calvin Tompkins
The shadow act / Hilton Als
Gettin' paid / Kelefa Sanneh
The mask of metal-face doom / Ta-Nehisi Coates
The autofictions of Kendrick Lamar / Doreen St. Félix
Part VI. Annals of the law: Opera in Greenville / Rebecca West
Black bodies in motion and in pain / Edwidge Danticat
A darker presence / Vinson Cunningham
Before the law / Jennifer Gonnerman
The forgotten ones / Rachel Aviv
The color of blood / Calvin Trillin
Part VII. The uprising and after: The matter of Black lives / Jelani Cobb
The uprising / Luke Mogelson
The riot report / Jill Lepore
How do we change America? / Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Trayvon generation / Elizabeth Alexander
