Molefi Kete Asante is professor and chair of African American Studies at Temple University and author of several
books, including The Afrocentric Idea (Temple) and The Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans.
Abarry, Abu S. (Ed.) : Temple University.
Abu S. Abarry is assistant chair of African American Studies at Temple University.
Summary
Organized by major themes -- such as creation stories, and resistance to oppression -- this collection gather
works of imagination, politics and history, religion, and culture from many societies and across recorded time.
Asante and Abarry marshal together ancient, anonymous writers whose texts were originally written on stone and
papyri and the well-known public figures of more recent times whose spoken and written words have shaped the intellectual
history of the diaspora.
Within this remarkably wide-ranging volume are such sources as prayers and praise songs from ancient Kemet and
Ethiopia along with African American spirituals; political commentary from C.L.R. James, Malcolm X, Mary McLeod
Bethune, and Joseph Nyerere; stirring calls for social justice from David Walker, Abdias Nacimento, Franzo Fanon,
and Martin Luther King, Jr. Featuring newly translated texts and documents published for the first time, the volume
also includes an African chronology, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. With this landmark book, Asante
and Abarry offer a major contribution to the ongoing debates on defining the African canon.
