Firespitter
by Jayne Cortez
Nightboat Books, 2025
A long-awaited, comprehensive collection of renowned poet and performance artist Jayne Cortez’s poetry.
Like the jazz rhythms that inspired and punctuated her practice, Jayne Cortez improvised her way through and across disciplines, bridging poetry and performance with music and the visual arts to create a unique body of work. Consciously rupturing the boundaries between art and politics, Cortez’s practice uneasily fits within literary movements of the 20th century, residing everywhere and nowhere between the Black Arts Movement, Surrealism, feminism, and early performance art. As intersectional as it is interdisciplinary, her work is consistently visceral and fearless, acting as a powerful expression of collective rage on behalf of the disenfranchised and dispossessed. In the words of historian Robin D.G. Kelley, “her poetry was never ‘protest’ but a complete revolt, a clarion call for a new way of life.”
[Publication date: August 20, 2025]
by Jayne Cortez
Nightboat Books, 2025
A long-awaited, comprehensive collection of renowned poet and performance artist Jayne Cortez’s poetry.
Like the jazz rhythms that inspired and punctuated her practice, Jayne Cortez improvised her way through and across disciplines, bridging poetry and performance with music and the visual arts to create a unique body of work. Consciously rupturing the boundaries between art and politics, Cortez’s practice uneasily fits within literary movements of the 20th century, residing everywhere and nowhere between the Black Arts Movement, Surrealism, feminism, and early performance art. As intersectional as it is interdisciplinary, her work is consistently visceral and fearless, acting as a powerful expression of collective rage on behalf of the disenfranchised and dispossessed. In the words of historian Robin D.G. Kelley, “her poetry was never ‘protest’ but a complete revolt, a clarion call for a new way of life.”
[Publication date: August 20, 2025]
REVIEWS:
“Cortez has been and continues to be an explorer, probing the valleys and chasms of human existence. No ravine is too perilous, no abyss too threatening for Jayne Cortez.”
—Maya Angelou
"A poet and performance artist whose work was known for its visceral power, its political outrage and above all its sheer, propulsive musicality."
—Margalit Fox, The New York Times
“Jayne Cortez understands better than most how to make spoken words and images swing and rock.”
—Gene Seymour, Newsday
"A publication anticipated for over a decade . . . superheroic."
—Christopher Spaide, Literary Hub
"The dynamic, vibrant work of poet, activist, and artist Jayne Cortez (1934–2012) is gathered in this comprehensive collection. Spanning 43 years and representing a wide range of Cortez’s creative eras, each section illuminates how expansive and genre-bending the poet’s extraordinary body of work remained over the decades . . . remarkable."
—Booklist
"Her speaker is so deeply embodied, and her poems are so disobedient . . . You get this whirling vision of all he liberation struggles Cortez was directly involved in, from the Watts Rebellion to the anti-apartheid movement. Her poetry is, amongst other things, an amazing record of the times, of what political engagement looks like."
—Will Harris, The Poetry Review
"Ingenious."
—Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jayne Cortez (1934–2012) was an African American poet, performing artist, publisher, and activist who remains widely celebrated for her political, surrealist, and dynamic innovations in language, lyricism, and visceral sound. Taking a stand against discrimination, exploitation, and ecological devastation, Cortez’s work and life probed those issues poetically and politically. As a multifaceted artist, she published a dozen volumes of poetry, including On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems (2008); The Beautiful Book (2007); Jazz Fan Looks Back (2002); Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere (1997); and Coagulations: New and Selected Poems (1982); Poetic Magnetic (1991); Firespitter (1982); Mouth on Paper (1977); Scarifications (1973); and Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man’s Wares (1969), performed her own poems with music on ten recordings, and was the driving force behind several international conferences that combined her artistic and political concerns.
The Making of a Black Communist: The Selected Writings of Eugene Gordon
Louis J. Parascandola (Editor)
University of Massachusetts Press, 2025
[Publication date: July 18, 2025]
Eugene Gordon (1891–1974) was a major writer involved in the development of the burgeoning Black literary scene in Boston in the 1920s, an active player in the Harlem Renaissance, and a longtime member of the Communist Party. Despite his credentials as a reporter, editor, fiction writer, and political activist, he is rarely mentioned in studies of the Harlem Renaissance or Marxist politics. Here, Louis J. Parascandola has pulled together Gordon’s journalism, autobiographical writing, and fiction. This new collection, featuring both previously published pieces from a wide variety of publications as well as material that has never before been published, demonstrates his range and his skill while establishing his importance as a critical voice of his time.
Gordon was born and raised in the South but made his way north at a young age. In Boston, he founded the Saturday Evening Quill Club, an African American literary group that included other notable writers such as Helene Johnson and Dorothy West. He later became editor of and contributor to two major publications coming out of the era: the Messenger and Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. As he grew more political, he joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and became editor of and contributor to the New Masses. Scholars looking to research him have struggled to find disparate writings to get a fuller sense of his literary stylings as well as his political commitments. This welcome new volume establishes Gordon as a significant, understudied figure.
Gordon was born and raised in the South but made his way north at a young age. In Boston, he founded the Saturday Evening Quill Club, an African American literary group that included other notable writers such as Helene Johnson and Dorothy West. He later became editor of and contributor to two major publications coming out of the era: the Messenger and Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. As he grew more political, he joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and became editor of and contributor to the New Masses. Scholars looking to research him have struggled to find disparate writings to get a fuller sense of his literary stylings as well as his political commitments. This welcome new volume establishes Gordon as a significant, understudied figure.
REVIEWS:
“In this riveting and illuminating collection Louis Parascandola not only helps readers to recall an important Black Communist but, as well, provides substantive detail on the trajectory of Black Feminism, Jim Crow New Orleans, and the Scottsboro case, among other profoundly important topics.”—Gerald Horne, author of Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party
“The Making of a Black Communist is an exciting, much-needed study of the influential but little-known Eugene Gordon, a pioneering journalist, WWI Army officer, and friend of Langston Hughes. Parascandola’s deft readings and rigorous research open new vistas on Gordon’s remarkable life and work.” —Verner Mitchell, coeditor of In Flaming Letters: Lucia Pitts, Poet of the Six Triple Eight
“Parascandola provides not only a thorough introduction of Eugene Gordon and his writings, through which readers can glean his importance, but also accessible explanatory notes for each of the writings collected in the volume, which is instructive for the reader who may not be familiar with the historical context(s) in which Gordon was writing. The collection also includes writings that focus on themes that are relevant to our historical moment, including the intersections of race, class, and gender; racial and gender violence; and race and labor.”—Charisse Burden-Stelly, author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States
“This new volume helps recover the work of Eugene Gordon, a leading figure of the Black Left in the 1930s who has received little scholarly attention. Parascandola’s book does much to correct that.”—James Smethurst, author of Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
Louis J. Parascandola is professor of English at Long Island University. He has edited or coedited several collections, including: Heroine of the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Gwendolyn Bennett’s Selected Writings; Amy Jacques Garvey: Selected Writings from The Negro World, 1923–1928; A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion; and Eric Walrond: The Critical Heritage. His scholarship has appeared in Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies; Langston Hughes Review; Afro-Americans in New York Life and History; Comparative Literature Studies; and more.
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
by Janet Bishop and Cara Manes (Editors)
and 12 contributors
Yale University Press, 2025
[Publication date: April 1, 2025]
A landmark survey of the wide-ranging practice of one of the twentieth century’s most innovative artists.
Best known for her sinuous looped-wire sculptures, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) used everyday materials to create endlessly innovative works in a variety of media over her more than six-decade-long career, from her student days at the experimental Black Mountain College in the 1940s through her mature years in her adopted home city of San Francisco.
This extensively illustrated volume explores the astonishing expansiveness of Asawa’s work, from the abstract looped-wire sculptures for which she garnered national attention in the 1950s to her nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. The book explores the ways in which her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative practice, and highlights the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.
Essays and other writings consider Asawa and her work within the context of modern abstract sculpture, through the lens of craft and the materiality of wire, and in relation to her Asian American identity and her personal history as a Japanese American who was incarcerated with her family during World War II. Focus texts illuminate the connections between Asawa and key artistic figures such as Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom she maintained enduring relationships.
Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA}
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(April 5–September 2, 2025)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026)
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
(March 20–September 13, 2026)
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland
(October 18, 2026–January 24, 2027)
REVIEWS:
“Wind your way into an artist’s imagination with Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, a celebration of the modernist’s six-decade career spent bending notions of surface, volume, and perception.”—Vanity Fair
“Retrospective not only honours Asawa’s technical mastery but also underscores the connection between her work and lived experiences. It reaffirms the power of art to transform the mundane into the astounding, leaving audiences sure of Asawa’s enduring legacy.”—Fruzsina Vida, Aesthetica
Included in a list of “Icons, Innovators and Legacies: The Art Books That Define 2025,” New Born’s Planet (Romania)
A Top 10 choice in Publishers Weekly's Spring 2025 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview
“Central to this catalog . . . are beautiful full-page images of her works, including intricate wire sculptures, bronze casts, paperfolds, drawings, and prints.”—American Craft
Best known for her sinuous looped-wire sculptures, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) used everyday materials to create endlessly innovative works in a variety of media over her more than six-decade-long career, from her student days at the experimental Black Mountain College in the 1940s through her mature years in her adopted home city of San Francisco.
This extensively illustrated volume explores the astonishing expansiveness of Asawa’s work, from the abstract looped-wire sculptures for which she garnered national attention in the 1950s to her nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. The book explores the ways in which her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative practice, and highlights the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.
Essays and other writings consider Asawa and her work within the context of modern abstract sculpture, through the lens of craft and the materiality of wire, and in relation to her Asian American identity and her personal history as a Japanese American who was incarcerated with her family during World War II. Focus texts illuminate the connections between Asawa and key artistic figures such as Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom she maintained enduring relationships.
Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA}
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(April 5–September 2, 2025)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026)
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
(March 20–September 13, 2026)
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland
(October 18, 2026–January 24, 2027)
REVIEWS:
“Wind your way into an artist’s imagination with Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, a celebration of the modernist’s six-decade career spent bending notions of surface, volume, and perception.”—Vanity Fair
“Retrospective not only honours Asawa’s technical mastery but also underscores the connection between her work and lived experiences. It reaffirms the power of art to transform the mundane into the astounding, leaving audiences sure of Asawa’s enduring legacy.”—Fruzsina Vida, Aesthetica
Included in a list of “Icons, Innovators and Legacies: The Art Books That Define 2025,” New Born’s Planet (Romania)
A Top 10 choice in Publishers Weekly's Spring 2025 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview
“Central to this catalog . . . are beautiful full-page images of her works, including intricate wire sculptures, bronze casts, paperfolds, drawings, and prints.”—American Craft
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
Janet Bishop is Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Cara Manes is associate curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Janet Bishop is Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Cara Manes is associate curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
