Random House Large Print Publishing
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
Key Metrics
- Ibram X Kendi
- Random House Large Print Publishing
- Paperback
- 9780593402429
- 9.2 X 6 X 1.4 inches
- 1.5 pounds
- Biography & Autobiography > Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The story begins in 1619--a year before the Mayflower--when the White Lion disgorges some 20-and-odd Negroes onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume community history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith--instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.
This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.
Author Bio
Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, a #1 New York Times best-selling author, and the youngest-ever winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He is also a 2020–2021 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where he will continue work on his next historical monograph, Bones of Inequity: A Narrative History of Racist Policies in America.
A professor of history, Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a correspondent at CBS News. His first book, The Black Campus Movement, won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize. In 2016, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction at 34 years old for his best seller Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. It was also a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
Professor Kendi has published numerous essays in academic journals and periodicals, including the Journal of African American History, Journal of African American Studies, Journal of Social History, New York Times, Guardian, Time, Chronicle of Higher Education, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, and Washington Post.
He has received research fellowships, grants, and visiting appointments from a variety of universities, foundations, professional associations, and libraries, including the American Historical Association, Library of Congress, National Academy of Education, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Brown University, Princeton University, UCLA, and Duke University.
In 2019, Professor Kendi was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and honored on The Root 100, listed as the 15th most influential African American between the ages of 25 and 45 and the most influential college professor.
Professor Kendi’s third book, the #1 New York Times best seller, How to Be an Antiracist, was hailed by the Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” How to Be an Antiracist has been named in several lists of best books of 2019, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Time, and NPR. He also coauthored the #1 New York Times best seller, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a young-adult version of Stamped from the Beginning. He recently released his first board book, Antiracist Baby.
Professor Kendi earned his doctorate in African American studies from Temple University in 2010. He earned his undergraduate degrees from Florida A&M University in 2004. In addition to Bones of Inequity, Professor Kendi is coediting 400 Souls: A Community History of African American History, 1619–2019, an assemblage of 80 writers and 10 poets that weaves together 400 years of African American history.
Source: Boston University Center for Antiracist Research
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