The Black Box

Writing the Race

By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman

A New York Times Notable Book

“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” — Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste

“This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.”
—The New York Times

A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with one another, over the course of the country’s history

Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s, legendary Harvard introductory course in African American studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—these writers used words to create a livable world, a home, for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society.

It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a group formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal subhuman bondage transformed itself through the word into a community joined in overcoming one of history’s most pernicious lies. Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture of people who have often disagreed markedly about what it means to be Black, and about how best to use the past to create a more just and equitable future.

This is the epic story of how, through essays and speeches, novels, plays, and poems, a long line of creative thinkers has unveiled the contours of—and resisted confinement in—the black box inside which this nation within a nation has been assigned, willy-nilly, from the nation’s founding through to today. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a people.

©2024 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“The allure of this book, and the reason for its existence, are the narrative links he draws among these people and events, and his insistence that a survey of African American history is incomplete without a special consideration of how writing has undergirded and powered it. This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.”—Tope Folarin, The New York Times

“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.”—Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“These reflections are elegant entrees into the debates that Black Americans have conducted in their long quest for self-definition. The Black Box succeeds not because it contains novel facts but because Gates’s gloss on the established history glimmers. He proposes that it is by narrating and naming—that is, by writing—that Black Americans have shattered the narrow boxes in which they have so often been imprisoned. By writing about this writing, he, too, pens his way free.”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

The Theoretical Black Box Perspective

Dr. Henry Louis Gates provided a brilliant perspective to the black box analogy that is used to define race. It's a rather broad perception that properly addresses the proverbial elephant in the room as it pertains to racial identity. What is Black? What is African American? What is Afro-American? These questions always arise throughout the topology of race in America.

Another outstanding Henry Loius Gates, Jr. history producion

An excellent discussion of the roots of the Black American caste system. The text is a superb weaving of literature and orature from America's Black elite that exposes their fears and rejections of "the other side" of themselves and how the neuroses generated in slavery and captivity causes continued intraracial separation. I am on my second listening of the text and am glad I purchased the book for future reference. Bravo, Dr. Gates.

Excellent book!

I learned so much and there are tons of references to historic writings and materials which i love. I only wish henry would have read it himself. The audio is still good quality and clear. Highly recommend this title.

What every American should know

Whether one dislikes or is enthused about what history is should know it without boundaries. Thank you, Dr. Gates

Growth through learning

Never disappointed in learning more about the history od my people. Should be required reading for everyone!

The Best Book I listened to in 2024

Dis-like: Not a Thing. I recommend this Book to the Public, who ever wants to know the Truth about Life.

Unbiased!

Eye opening and a positive challenge to America to deal with differences, biases, and our future!

Comprehensive, Historic and Relevant

This book is so well written. The research is stellar, the composition is compelling and the performance is excellent.