Foreword by Beverly Guy-Sheftall Acknowledgments Part I. Feminist Race Theory 1. Teaching Theory, Talking Community 2. Politicizing the Spirit: Toni Morrison 3. Black Feminism in Liberation Limbos 4. Resting in Gardens, Battling in Deserts: Black Women’s Activism 5. Radicalizing Black Feminism 6. Angela Y. Davis: Liberation Praxis 7. Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency Part II. Democracy and Captivity 8. Democracy and Captivity 9. Black Suffering in Search of the “Beloved Community” 10. American Prison Notebooks 11. Violations 12. War, Dissent, and Social Justice 13. Academia, Activism, and Imprisoned Intellectuals Part III. Sovereign Political Subjects 14. Activist Scholars or Radical Subjects? 15. Campaigns Against Blackness 16. Sovereign Kinship and the President Elect 17. The Dead Zone 18. Racism, Genocide, and Resistance 19. “All Power to the People!”: Arendt’s Communicative Power in Racial Democracy

"…this Joy James reader is at its core a portrait of 'the making of a dissident voice' … What we most desperately need in a world that fears and silences opposition—or worse—are revolutionaries who speak truth to power and beckon us to stand with them in solidarity. A luta continua. The struggle continues." — from the Foreword by Beverly Guy-Sheftall"These broad-ranging essays circle around the topic of building community under siege. Communities can be 'thorny ties,' as Joy James notes, yet are vital for developing a critical consciousness on one's society. James also provides an astute analysis of the antirevolutionary trends in social theory today. Herein one will find the voice of a dissident humanist in full flower." — Linda Martín Alcoff, coeditor of Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader