We are the leaders we have been looking for / Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Material type:
TextSeries: W.E.B. Du Bois lecturesPublisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2024]Description: 168 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780674737600
- 0674737601
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
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Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | New | 323.042 G552 | Available | 33111011128671 | ||||
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Adult Book
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Main Library | NonFiction | New | 323.042 G552 | Available | 33111011344286 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.
"Like attending a jazz concert with all of one's favorite musicians...James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Toni Morrison, and more...Glaude brilliantly takes us on an epic tour through their lives and work."
―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Box: Writing the Race
We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.
Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude's unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency constrained our politics as we turned to yet another prophet-like figure. He examines his personal history and the traditions that both shape and overwhelm his own voice.
Glaude weaves anecdotes about his evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, encouraging us to reflect on the lessons of these great thinkers and address imaginatively the challenges of our day in voices uniquely our own.
Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must step out from under the shadows of past giants to build a better society--one that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
A Story -- Looking Back -- On Prophecy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- On Heroism and Malcom X -- On Democracy and Ella Baker -- A Thicket of Thorns.
"Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard in 2011, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For argues for the importance of self-cultivation in pursuit of justice as a critical feature of Black politics, what Eddie S. Glaude Jr. calls Black democratic perfectionism. Building on the political scientist Adolph Reed's work on 'Black custodial politics' Glaude critiques our impulse to outsource political needs to a professional class of politicians that purportedly represent us. Instead, he affirms the capacities of ordinary people to cultivate a better self and a better world by locating the prophetic and the heroic not in the pulpit but in the pew"-- Provided by publisher.