Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing

Spanning over 250 years of history, Black Ink traces black literature in America from Frederick Douglass to Ta-Nehisi Coates in this “breathtaking anthology celebrating the power of the written word to forge change” (O, The Oprah Magazine).

Throughout American history black people are the only group of people to have been forbidden by law to learn to read. This expansive collection seeks to shed light on that injustice, putting some of America’s most cherished voices in a conversation in one...