Call and Response: Key Debates in African American Studies

by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), Jennifer Burton

Unprecedented in scope and approach, this primary-text reader offers a fresh and flexible framework for exploring signal issues of the black experience in the United States. With voices ranging from Phillis Wheatley in the late eighteenth century to Barack Obama in the twenty-first, Call and Response presents multiple perspectives on key controversies that probe the fundamental relationship between race and democracy.

1248 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.

Reviews

[Shanae · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm typically not a really big fan of anthologies by Dr. Gates, but I must admit that this introduction to key debates was fantastic! Full of interesting texts from the very first writings of Blacks in America to analyses of popular culture and current Black politicians. This is by far one of the best African American literature books I've ever picked up and I think it is a must have in the collection of any African American literature/studies scholar.