Darkwater - (Black Narratives) by W E B Du Bois

Book Synopsis

Initially published in 1920, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil is a combination of essays that tackle the power dynamics of gender, race and religion. It's a searing portrait of America influenced by Du Bois' own personal experiences. Du Bois delivers a contemporary examination of African American life during the first half of the twentieth century. He addresses issues of segregation, employment disparity and misogyny, specifically toward Black women. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil is one of his prominent autobiographies, detailing internal and external conflicts and their effect on the whole. He presents an overall indictment of systemic racism, oppression and exploitation of any kind. W.E.B. Du Bois was a celebrated figure who dedicated his life to uplifting and educating the African American community. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil is a critical part of his enduring legacy. It broaches tough topics and presents a valid critique of American culture. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil is both modern and readable.

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From the Back Cover

A collection of essays and stories about the social issues plaguing the African American community. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, by W.E.B. Du Bois is an examination of race, gender and class within a white supremacist society. It confronts glaring ideals that affect Black people domestically and abroad.

Review Quotes

"Du Bois essentially defined black America in the 20th century with his notion of 'double consciousness'--the idea that African Americans experience everything in this world both as Americans and as black people. Scholars have come up shaky in their efforts to update Du Bois's simple, but ingenious formula."
--Ta-Nehisi Coates

"[Du Bois was] the greatest of the early civil-rights leaders, a figure of towering significance in American politics and letters ... Remembered for his single-minded commitment to racial justice and his capacity to shape black consciousness, Du Bois used language and ideas to hammer out a strategy for political equality and to sound the depths of the black experience in the aftermath of slavery."
--Stuart Hall

"The greatest of the early civil-rights leaders, a figure of towering significance in American politics and letters."
--Guardian

"Du Bois' philosophy is significant today because it addresses what many would argue is the real world problem of white domination.So long as racist white privilege exists, and suppresses the dreams and the freedoms of human beings, so long will Du Bois be relevant as a thinker, for he, more than almost any other, employed thought in the service of exposing this privilege, and worked to eliminate it in the service of a greater humanity."
--Donald J. Morse

"We need to view [Du Bois] not simply as the individual genius that he undoubtedly was. We need to view him and his life of struggle and achievement--and betrayal by his native land--as a metaphor for the essential meaning of black life in America. Advocate, statesman, negotiator, defender, champion, ambassador, griot, and peerless challenger of the system, Du Bois was all these things and more of--and for--our national self ... He was the best prime minister we ever had for our State That Never Was."
--Bill Strickland

"In 1920 W.E.B. Du Bois's Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil issued a call for an anti-colonial, internationalist approach to historical and social science scholarship. At a time when anthropology's institutional stance as the science of localized and isolated'primitive' cultures was still being forged, Darkwater offered an alternate mapping of the discipline, one centered on an understanding of capitalism as a racialized, interconnected global system that continually produced inequality and difference."
--Dialectical Anthropology

"The lasting power of Darkwater's democratic vision ... consists not only in what Du Bois is able to see; it also encompasses what he enables readers to see anew - and, possibly, both differently and further than Du Bois himself. Without presuming that it is necessarily or always the case that the view from Du Bois's 'veiled corner' will prove more illuminating than the view from another vantage, Darkwater shifts the burden of proof. It forces us to pause and consider the counter-examples that are disregarded or neutralized whenever we talk about democratic, or relatively democratic, societies as though a shared commitment to racial equality were an established fact."
--Lawrie Balfour, Political Theory

"In Darkwater DuBois writes what appears as a guide for 'colored men and women' on childrearing. But, as it concerns the residents of the future, it is, in fact, a revolutionary political agenda."
--The New Centennial Review

About the Author

W.E.B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. He was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. He is the author of numerous books, including the seminal The Souls of Black Folk and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America.