New Books in African American Studies

In Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival (University
of North Carolina Press, 2026), naturalist, forager, and educator Maria
Pinto uncovers strange and beautiful connections between the natural
and human worlds, mingling reportage, research, memoir, and nature
writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers’ domestication
of the unforgettable aroma of truffles, to the possibility that
enslaved people wielded mycological poisons against their enslavers.

Pinto
brings a new perspective and a distinctive literary voice to this mix
of environmental and lived history, and every page sings with her
enthusiasm for the networks in which we are embedded: fungal,
ecological, ancestral, and communal. Join us in pursuit of beautiful,
perplexing, delicious, and deadly mushrooms as we explore this
understudied kingdom’s awe-inspiring diversity, discovering how fungi
have been used by people, especially those on the margins, for survival,
pleasure, revelation, and revolution.

When she’s not in the
woods (and sometimes when she is), Maria Pinto is a writer, editor, and
educator. She teaches writing for various literary organizations. She
reads fiction for Peripheries Journal and serves on the board
of Hale, an outdoor education and land conservancy nonprofit. Her
writing has been supported by Assets for Artists at Massachusetts Museum
of Contemporary Art, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Vermont Studio
Center, the Mass Cultural Council, the Writers’ Room of Boston, The
Mastheads, and The Garrett on the Green. You can find Maria at her Website and on Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism’s reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women’s experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of
the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A
pioneer in children’s music and an innovative educator, Jenkins recorded
forty albums and influenced countless children and adults over a
sixty-year career. Gayle Wald places Jenkins’s life and work within the
larger contexts of the civil rights movement, the folk revival, and the
changing worlds of children’s education and entertainment in This is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement (University
of Chicago Press, 2025). Committed to civil rights, Jenkins infused her
beliefs in social justice and our shared humanity into her work with
children and her compositions. She viewed music as a way for children to
come together and establish connections with each other rather than as a
gateway to musical achievement or literacy. Based on dozens of
interviews including with Jenkins and her life partner Bernadelle
Richter, Wald traces Jenkins’s life from her childhood in segregated
Chicago, her involvement with the integrated folk music scene, and her
successful career as a music educator. This is Rhythm was given special recognition by the 2026 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

What does Blackness look like? In Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World (Duke University Press, 2026),
Cécile Bishop argues that this seemingly simple question has no
straightforward answer. Instead of treating race as something
immediately visible, she explores how Blackness emerges through the
interplay of perception, language, and history.

A central theme of the book is that visibility is never neutral.
Through examples ranging from photographs of the Liberation of Paris to
works of art such as Portrait of a Black Woman, Bishop shows that
Blackness cannot be reduced to what is seen. Instead, she introduces the
idea of Blackness as form, emphasizing the importance of representation, opacity, and aesthetic experience.

Engaging with thinkers such as Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon,
Bishop invites readers to rethink the assumption that seeing is the same
as knowing. Forms of Blackness offers a thoughtful and original account of how race is shaped not simply by appearance, but by the ways we learn to see.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an
Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of
religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African
diasporic communities in the Netherlands.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In Contested Continent: The Struggle for America, c.1000-1680 (Oxford University Press, 2026), the newest installment of the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Peter C. Mancall
recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions
of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans. This
history spans the continent from the North Atlantic to the West Indies
and includes the entire Atlantic basin, telling a new story about the
origins of major aspects of American culture. He illuminates the rise of
a booming trans-Atlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant
American natural resources; the central role that European migrants and
their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans and the
displacement of Indigenous peoples; and the spread of self-governing
polities where many enjoyed religious freedom. None of these
developments was inevitable. Conflicts broke out frequently as different
peoples battled over precious resources. Europeans' appetites for
material gain and expanding Christendom brought horrific consequences
for those brutalized, enslaved, and vulnerable to infectious
diseases. This is a sweeping history of developments crucial to the
eventual founding of the United States. Contested Continent underscores
the titanic struggles between the peoples who had populated the
Americas for centuries and the migrants from the Old World who initiated
changes that created a New World that offered boundless opportunities
for some and crushed the aspirations of others.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies