pt. I Genealogies: Family matters (The New Yorker) --
My Yiddishe mama (The Wall Street Journal) --
Native sons of liberty (The New York Times Week in Review) --
In the kitchen (Colored People) --
Walk the last mile (Colored People) --
The last mill picnic (Colored People) --
In our lifetime (The Root). --
pt. II Excavation: Introduction, Our nig; or, sketches from the life of a free black by Harriet E. Wilson --
Introduction, The bondswoman's narrative : a novel by Hannah Crafts --
In her own write, series introduction, The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers --
Introduction, African American lives, with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham --
Introduction to the first edition, Africana : the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience, second edition, with Kwame Anthony Appiah --
Prefatory notes on the African slave trade, In search of our roots. --
pt. III Canons: The master's pieces : on canon formation and the African-American tradition, Loose canons --
Introduction, "Tell me, sir ... What is 'black' literature?," Loose canons --
Preface to the second edition, The Norton anthology of African American literature, with Nellie Y. McKay --
Canon confidential : a Sam Slade caper (The New York Times Book Review). --
pt. IV "Race," writing, and reading: Being, the will, and the semantics of death : Wole Soyinka's Death and the king's horseman --
Introduction, Writing "race" and the difference it makes (Critical Inquiry) --
Preface, The image of the black in Western art, with David Bindman --
The signifying monkey and the language of signifyin(g) : rhetorical difference and the orders of meaning (The signifying monkey) --
Reading "Race," writing, and difference (PMLA) --
Jean Toomer's conflicted racial identity, with Rudolph P. Byrd (The Chronicle of Higher Education). --
pt. V Reading people: Both sides now : W.E.B. Du Bois (The New York Times) --
The prince who refused the kingdom : John Hope Franklin (Du Bois Review) --
King of cats : Albert Murray (The New Yorker) --
White like me : Anatole Broyard (The New Yorker) --
Bliss Broyard (In search of our roots) --
Elizabeth Alexander (Faces of America) --
Oprah Winfrey (In search of our roots). --
pt. VI Reading places: Africa, to me (Wonders of the African world) --
Black London (The New Yorker) --
Harlem on our minds (Critical Inquiry) --
Introduction (Black in Latin America) --
Brazil : "May Exú give me the power of speech" (Black in Latin America). --
pt. VII Culture and politics : 2 Live Crew, decoded (The New York Times) --
"Authenticity," or the lesson of Little Tree (The New York Times Book Review) --
The chitlin circuit (The New Yorker) --
Changing places (The New York Times) --
Forty acres and a gap in wealth (The New York Times) --
Ending the slavery blame-game (The New York Times) --
Is he a racist? James Watson's errant, perilous theories (The Washington Post) --
pt. VIII Interviews : An interview with Josephine Baker and James Baldwin (The Southern Review) --
The future of Africa : an interview with Wole Soyinka (The Root) --
A conversation with Condoleezza Rice : on leadership (Du Bois Review) --
A conversation with William Julius Wilson on the election of Barack Obama (Du Bois Review) --
A conversation with Isabel Wilkerson : on America's great migration (Du Bois Review).