I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays
by Nell Irvin Painter
Doubleday, 2024
[Publication date: April 23, 2024]
One of Lit Hub'sMost Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Electric Lit's 75 Books by Women of Color To Read in 2024
“Nell Irvin Painter is one of the towering Black intellects of the last half century…[I Just Keep Talking] is more than an odyssey for the senses; it’s a revelation that will inspire courage in anyone seeking to express their truth.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
“Razor-sharp analysis lights up every page…[I Just Keep Talking] affirms Painter’s reputation as a historian and political commentator par excellence.” —Publisher’s Weekly *starred review*
“Painter. . . gathers more than 40 previously published essays, framed by a new introduction and coda, reflecting her shrewd analyses of issues including race, class, and gender; history and historiography; police brutality and poverty; art, education, and politics. . . A vibrant, insightful collection from an indispensable voice.” —Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*
“Whatever her subject—race, gender, class, art, politics—[Painter] finds the surprising complication. . .A vibrant, compelling book.” —Margo Jefferson, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner and author of Constructing a Nervous System
"Nell Painter is one of the most important and versatile American historians of the last half century. This stunning array of essays…contains a potent autobiographical sizzle from introduction to the end…Prolific, provocative, and with a voice all her own, Painter reveals with admirable vulnerability a mind in transit through time." —David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
“Nell Painter is one of the most important, influential and prolific historians of the United States…readers will learn a great deal about the country and just as much about how to craft a life of purpose and joy.” —Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
“Consistently brilliant, restlessly curious and profoundly empathetic, Nell Irvin Painter's voice is simply indispensable…With a historian's sense of context and a poet's gift of language she lays bare truths we've collectively ignored and points us toward the democratic possibilities we have yet to realize.” —Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School and author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress.
“Nell Painter has never minced words. Here, as she puts it, she keeps talking—in essays and artwork ranging from the 1980s to our own fraught moment, in explorations of Blackness and Whiteness, of the past and the present, of the verbal and the visual…one of America's most important historians.” —Drew Gilpin Faust, author of Necessary Trouble and former president of Harvard University
“Give thanks that Nell Irvin Painter won't stop talking—and thinking and writing and bringing the truth. And give thanks for these sage words on art, on history, on Blackness, on America, on survival from this bone-strong woman who keeps on keeping on, in glorious insistence.” —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
“For the past five decades, acclaimed writer, artist, historian, and critic Nell Irvin Painter’s work has felt ahead of its time….This insightful anthology shows why Painter, now 81 years old, is still one of the most important voices in America.” —Time Magazine
“I Just Keep Talking reads like an intellectual adventure story…[Painter] writes that readers may be 'amused' by her book's title, and what it suggests about her persistence; just as likely, it will leave them wanting to hear more.” —Amy Davidson Sorkin
“Nell Irvin Painter is one of the towering Black intellects of the last half century…[I Just Keep Talking] is more than an odyssey for the senses; it’s a revelation that will inspire courage in anyone seeking to express their truth.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
“Razor-sharp analysis lights up every page…[I Just Keep Talking] affirms Painter’s reputation as a historian and political commentator par excellence.” —Publisher’s Weekly *starred review*
“Painter. . . gathers more than 40 previously published essays, framed by a new introduction and coda, reflecting her shrewd analyses of issues including race, class, and gender; history and historiography; police brutality and poverty; art, education, and politics. . . A vibrant, insightful collection from an indispensable voice.” —Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*
“Whatever her subject—race, gender, class, art, politics—[Painter] finds the surprising complication. . .A vibrant, compelling book.” —Margo Jefferson, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner and author of Constructing a Nervous System
"Nell Painter is one of the most important and versatile American historians of the last half century. This stunning array of essays…contains a potent autobiographical sizzle from introduction to the end…Prolific, provocative, and with a voice all her own, Painter reveals with admirable vulnerability a mind in transit through time." —David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
“Nell Painter is one of the most important, influential and prolific historians of the United States…readers will learn a great deal about the country and just as much about how to craft a life of purpose and joy.” —Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
“Consistently brilliant, restlessly curious and profoundly empathetic, Nell Irvin Painter's voice is simply indispensable…With a historian's sense of context and a poet's gift of language she lays bare truths we've collectively ignored and points us toward the democratic possibilities we have yet to realize.” —Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School and author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress.
“Nell Painter has never minced words. Here, as she puts it, she keeps talking—in essays and artwork ranging from the 1980s to our own fraught moment, in explorations of Blackness and Whiteness, of the past and the present, of the verbal and the visual…one of America's most important historians.” —Drew Gilpin Faust, author of Necessary Trouble and former president of Harvard University
“Give thanks that Nell Irvin Painter won't stop talking—and thinking and writing and bringing the truth. And give thanks for these sage words on art, on history, on Blackness, on America, on survival from this bone-strong woman who keeps on keeping on, in glorious insistence.” —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
“For the past five decades, acclaimed writer, artist, historian, and critic Nell Irvin Painter’s work has felt ahead of its time….This insightful anthology shows why Painter, now 81 years old, is still one of the most important voices in America.” —Time Magazine
“I Just Keep Talking reads like an intellectual adventure story…[Painter] writes that readers may be 'amused' by her book's title, and what it suggests about her persistence; just as likely, it will leave them wanting to hear more.” —Amy Davidson Sorkin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
NELL IRVIN PAINTER, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, is the author of books including the New York Times bestseller The History of White People; Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol; and the National Book Critics Circle finalist Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over.
A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007, she
has received honorary degrees from Yale, Wesleyan, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dartmouth. After a Ph.D. in history
from Harvard, she earned degrees in painting from Mason Gross School of
the Arts at Rutgers and the Rhode Island School of Design. Nell Painter
lives and works in East Orange, New Jersey, and has made artists' books
in residencies such as MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, and Bogliasco. She
currently serves as Madame Chairman of MacDowell.
Acknowledging Radical Histories
by Gerald Horne
International Publishers, 2024
(Interviews by Chris Time Steele)
[Publication date: August 25, 2023]
In this collection of conversations, Dr. Horne confronts the history of settler colonialism and fighting fascism while giving dazzling insights on Jazz, Claude Barnett, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Shirley Graham Du Bois, while delivering deeper insights into the histories of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Chris Steele's curiosity as an interviewer creates dialogues where Dr. Horne often braids his journeys into the archives with his scholarship often opening up into his own personal narrative. Part history, part radical memoir, Acknowledging Radical Histories displays the power of conversation, solidarity, and coming together for a better future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research, scholarship, and writing has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University. Dr. Horne is the author of more than 35 books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews.
Selected Publications:
- Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War. SUNY Press (1986)
- Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1987)
- Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party. University of Delaware Press (1994)
- Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising And The 1960s. Da Capo Press (1997)
- From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, 1965–1980. University of North Carolina Press (2000)
- Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930–1950 : Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds and Trade Unionists. University of Texas Press (2001)
- Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois. New York University Press (2002)
- Race War!: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire. New York University Press. ISBN 9780814736418. JSTOR j.ctt9qg215. (2004)
- Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920. New York University Press (2005)
- The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten. University of California Press (2006)
- Cold War in a Hot Zone: The United States Confronts Labor and Independence Struggles in the British West Indies. Temple University Press (2007)
- The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War. University of Hawaii Press (2007)
- The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade. New York University Press (2007)
- Blows Against the Empire: U.S. Imperialism in Crisis. International Publishers (2008)
- Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica. New York University Press (2009)
- Mau Mau in Harlem?: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya. Palgrave MacMillan (2009)
- The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States. New York University Press (2009)
- W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography. Greenwood Press (2009)
- The End of Empires: African Americans and India. Temple University Press (2009)
- Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press (2011)
- Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation. New York University Press (2013)
- Black Revolutionary: William Patterson & the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle. University of Illinois Press (2013)
- The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York University Press (2014)
- Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow. Monthly Review Press (2014)
- Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution and the Origins of the Dominican Republic. Monthly Review Press (2015)
- Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary. Pluto Press (2016)
- The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Albert Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox. University of Illinois Press (2017)
- Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Struggle for the Right to Fly. Black Classic Press (2017)
- Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity. New York University Press (2018)
- The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean. Monthly Review Press (2018)
- Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. Monthly Review Press (2019)
- White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela. International Publishers (2019)
- The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. Monthly Review Press (2020)
- The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing. International Publishers (2020)
- The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism. International Publishers (2022)
- Revolting Capital: Racism and Radicalism in Washington D.C., 1900–2000. International Publishers (2023)
