CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/18/2021

Highly Anticipated ‘Soul of a Nation Reader’ is a New Release this week!

Featured spreads are from The ‘Soul of a Nation’ Reader: Writings by and about Black American Artists, 1960–1980, publisher Gregory R. Miller & Co.’s remarkable new 628-page compendium of approximately 230 original texts on Black identity, activism and social responsibility—many of which are previously unpublished, rare or have been out of print for decades. This essential volume was compiled over more than eight years of painstaking research by editors Mark Godfrey (curator of the landmark exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power), who contributes a substantial introductory essay, and Allie Biswas, who has written contextualizing introductions for each historic text. “In their own words! Clearly, Black culture is not a monolith," Kerry James Marshall writes. "Disputes about the status of Black artists and their liberation, or obligations, have rumbled through intellectual circles for generations. In shouts and murmurs, with protests and manifestos, artists and political activists have made their positions known. For the first time, a broad selection of the arguments covering the 1960s to 1980s has been compiled in a single volume. Now, anybody interested in understanding what is still at stake can do so with The 'Soul of a Nation' Reader.”