Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing This is the most comprehensive collection of writing by and about African-Americans ever to appear in one volume. Combining an extensive selection of poetry, prose, speeches, songs, documents, and letters dating from the pre-Colonial era through to the present day, it offers a testament to the pervasive influence of African-Americans on the political, creative, and cultural development of not just the United States but the whole world.

The most comprehensive collection of writing by and about African-Americans ever to appear in one volume Never before has such an impressive and far-reaching mix of writings by African-Americans been gathered together into a single anthology. Combining an extensive selection of poetry, prose, speeches, songs, documents, and letters dating from the pre-Colonial era through today's best and most well-known writers, this anthology offers a testament to the pervasive influence of African-Americans on the political, creative, and cultural development of the United States, even well before its inception.

"Crossing the Water, a collection of poems written just prior to those in Ariel, . . . is of immense importance in recording [Plath's] extraordinary development. One senses on every page a voice coming into its own, the chaos of a lifetime at last getting ready to assume its final, triumphant shape." — Kirkus Reviews Sylvia Plath's extraordinary collection pushes the envelope between dark and light, between our deep passions and desires that are often in tension with our duty to family and society. Water becomes a metaphor for the surface veneer that many of us carry, but Plath explores how easily this surface can be shaken and disturbed.

Lost in the Ohio River Valley in May 1793, twelve-year-old Clare and her two brothers struggle to survive in the wilderness and to avoid capture by the Shawnee Indians.

Investigating the discovery of the body, Sergeant Holly Rudd knows she's an unwelcome presence in the close-knit community of Bamfield. But she doesn't expect the residents to be spooked by the mere sight of her. What rattles Holly even more, though, is her overwhelming desire for diver and former Special Forces soldier Finn Carver. Finn has no doubt that the corpse he found while diving was a victim of foul play ? just as there's no doubt that he wants Holly. Now the two will have to come together to outwit a criminal who's already gotten away with murder.

What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. If being "American" means living in a land of freedom and opportunity, what are we to make of those Americans who were enslaved and who have suffered from the limitations of second-class citizenship throughout their lives? African American history illuminates the United States' core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being. This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement. It narrates the creation of a system of racialized chattel slavery, the eventual dismantling of that system in the national bloodletting of the Civil War, and the ways that civil rights disputes have continued to erupt in the more than 150 years since Emancipation. The Cause of Freedom carries forward to the Black Lives Matter movement, a grass-roots activist convulsion that declared that African Americans' present and past have value and meaning. At a moment when political debates grapple with the nation's obligation to acknowledge and perhaps even repair its original sin of racialized slavery, The Cause of Freedom tells a story about our capacity and willingness to realize the ideal articulated in the country's founding document, namely, that all people were created equal.

When we leave our destiny in the hands of others and live our life in the past, we immediately destroy our future. Scientists in the human genome industry have proved that all humans are 99.9 percent the same. Why then are some ethnicities progressive and others nonprogressive? Our current problems are not with the slave or colonial masters. We Are Becoming the Problem Now! Had we continued in the legacy of our ancestors simply known as slaves, we ought to have been the pride and joy of the whole world. They went through unimaginable pain, sorrow, hardship, and torment. They survived and even succeeded by leaving a godly legacy behind in the Negro spiritual songs and in arts, education, industry, and every conceivable field. Our current major problems as blacks in Africa and all over the world simply put are leadership and disunity. We do the dirty work by self-destroying ourselves and each other. Only few illiterate Caucasian would engage in overt discrimination. The majority of us have been trained in the art and act of covert self-destruction and in the destruction of the whole. We have so much zeal but without knowledge. We must bear in mind that zeal without knowledge is dead, so also knowledge without zeal is equally lifeless (Romans 10:2). Not until we harness our zeal and knowledge comprehensively can we live a progressive life. It has been said that if the West is to stand still and halt all development and progress, Africa would never catch up. Yet we have PhDs in every conceivable field. Do we blame that on the ancestors of the slave or colonial masters? No! We are to be blamed. We Are Becoming the Problem Now! Those who have ears to hear, let them hear because time is of the essence.

In the decades since Black liberation theology burst onto the scene, it has turned the world of church, society, and academia upside down. It has changed lives and ways of thinking as well. But now there is a question: What lessons has Black theology not learned as times have changed? In this expansion of the 2017 Yale Divinity School Beecher Lectures, Allan Boesak explores this question. If Black liberation theology had taken the issues discussed in these pages much more seriously – struggled with them much more intensely, thoroughly, and honestly – would it have been in a better position to help oppressed black people in Africa, the United States, and oppressed communities everywhere as they have faced the challenges of the last twenty five years? In a critical, self-critical engagement with feminist and, especially, African feminist theologians in a trans-disciplinary conversation, Allan Boesak, as Black liberation theologian from the Global South, offers tentative but intriguing responses to the vital questions facing Black liberation theology today, particularly those questions raised by the women.