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Gates is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research there. Educated at Yale and Clare College of the University of Cambridge, he taught English literature and Afro-American studies at Yale and at Cornell before joining Harvard in 1991.
Gates discovered The Bondwoman's Narrative which is the first known novel written by an African American woman who had been a slave. He along with Anthony Anthony Appiah edited Africana; The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience.
He is also general editor of the The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, co-editor of Transition magazine, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of essays, reviews and profiles in other magazines, scholarly periodicals and newspapers.
Honors granted to him include the Zora Neale Hurston Society Award for Cultural Scholarship, the Norman Rabb Award of the American Jewish Committee, the George Polk Award for Social Commentary and the Tikkun National Ethics Award. He has been a Mellon Fellow at Cambridge and the National Humanities Center, a Ford Foundation National Fellow and a MacArthur Prize Fellow.
Gates is also a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African
Americans Reclaimed Their Past
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Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (January 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307382400
ISBN-13: 978-0307382405
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
Unlike most white Americans who, if they are so inclined, can search
their ancestral records, identifying who among their forebears was the first
to set foot on this country�s shores, most African Americans, in tracing
their family�s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a
brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying black men and
women even their names. Yet, from that legacy of slavery, there have sprung
generations who�ve struggled, thrived, and lived extraordinary lives.
For too long, African Americans� family trees have been barren of branches,
but, very recently, advanced genetic testing techniques, combined with
archival research, have begun to fill in the gaps. Here, scholar Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes
nineteen extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey,
tracing family sagas through U.S. history and back to Africa.
Those whose recovered pasts collectively form an African American �people�s
history� of the United States include celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey,
Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, Chris Tucker, Morgan Freeman, Tina
Turner, and Quincy Jones; writers such as Maya Angelou and Bliss Broyard;
leading thinkers such as Harvard divinity professor Peter Gomes, the
Reverend T. D. Jakes, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and sociologist Sara
Lawrence-Lightfoot; and famous achievers such as astronaut Mae Jemison,
media personality Tom Joyner, decathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Ebony
and Jet publisher Linda Johnson Rice.
More than a work of history, In Search of Our Roots is a book of
revelatory importance that, for the first time, brings to light the lives of
ordinary men and women who, by courageous example, blazed a path for their
famous descendants. For a reader, there is the stirring pleasure of
witnessing long-forgotten struggles and triumphs�but there�s an enduring
reward as well. In accompanying the nineteen contemporary achievers on their
journey into the past and meeting their remarkable forebears, we come to
know ourselves.
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Lincoln
on Race and Slavery
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Hardcover: 408
pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 11, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691142343
ISBN-13: 978-0691142340
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
Generations of
Americans have debated the meaning of Abraham Lincoln's views on race
and slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, authorized the use
of black troops during the Civil War, supported a constitutional
amendment to outlaw slavery, and eventually advocated giving the vote to
black veterans and to what he referred to as "very intelligent negroes."
But he also harbored grave doubts about the intellectual capacity of
African Americans, publicly used the n-word until at least 1862, enjoyed
"darky" jokes and black-faced minstrel shows, and long favored permanent
racial segregation and the voluntary "colonization" of freed slaves in
Africa, the Caribbean, or South America. In this book--the first
complete collection of Lincoln's important writings on both race and
slavery--readers can explore these contradictions through Lincoln's own
words. Acclaimed Harvard scholar and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., presents the full range of Lincoln's views, gathered from
his private letters, speeches, official documents, and even race jokes,
arranged chronologically from the late 1830s to the 1860s.
Complete with definitive texts, rich historical notes, and Gates's
original introduction, this book charts the progress of a war within
Lincoln himself. We witness his struggles with conflicting aims and
ideas--a hatred of slavery and a belief in the political equality of all
men, but also anti-black prejudices and a determination to preserve the
Union even at the cost of preserving slavery. We also watch the
evolution of his racial views, especially in reaction to the heroic
fighting of black Union troops.
At turns inspiring and disturbing, Lincoln on Race and Slavery is
indispensable for understanding what Lincoln's views meant for his
generation--and what they mean for our own.
Finding
Oprah's Roots: Building an African-American Family Tree
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Written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
ISBN: 0307382389
Pub. Date: February 06, 2007
Format: Hardcover, 192pp
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Finding Oprah's Roots will not only endow readers with a new appreciation for the key contributions made by history's unsung but also equip them with the tools to connect to pivotal figures in their own past. A roadmap through the intricacies of public documents and online databases, the book also highlights genetic testing resources that can make it possible to know one's distant tribal roots in Africa.
For Oprah, the path back to the past was emotion-filled and profoundly illuminating, connecting the narrative of her family to the larger American narrative and �anchoring� her in a way not previously possible. For the reader, Finding Oprah's Roots offers the possibility of an equally rewarding experience.
African-American
Lives
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Unrated
Running time: 240 minutes
Distributor: PBS/Paramount Home Video
Review by AALBC.com Review of African-American Lives
Also check out a review of African-American Lives 2
Renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. DuBois professor of the Humanities and chair of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, takes Alex Haley's Roots saga to a whole new level. Using genealogy and DNA science, Dr. Gates tells the personal stories of eight accomplished African Americans, tracing their roots through American history and back to Africa. Participants include Dr. Ben Carson, Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Dr. Mae Jemison, Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and Oprah Winfrey.
America behind
the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans
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ISBN: 0446532738
Format: Hardcover, 464pp
Pub. Date: January 2004
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
"Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines the surprising social and economic journey African Americans have made. Using the interviews he conducted for his PBS series, Professor Gates portrays a community united by shared memory and a strong, vibrant culture, yet divided by wealth and lack of opportunity - a people still struggling to ensure true equality for all." Professor Gates traveled across the country interviewing forty-four famous and not-so-famous individuals from parts of the African-American community - the "Black Elite," "The New South," "Chicago's South Side," and "Black Hollywood." In their own words, each discusses what it means to be African American in the twenty-first century: from Maya Angelou and Morgan Freeman's reflections on "returning home" to the South...to convict "Eric Edwards" telling us how his peers find self-sufficiency and prove their adulthood...from an interracial couple describing how they cope with the remnants of racism in Birmingham to a single mother's insights into how life on Chicago's newly renovated South Side still presents its own particular obstacles and dangers.
The
Bondwoman's Narrative
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by Hannah Crafts, Henry Louis, Jr. Gates (Editor)
Format: Hardcover, 336pp.
ISBN: 0446530085
Publisher: Time Warner Trade Publishing
Pub. Date: April 2002
An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring, page-turning story of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.
When Professor Gates saw that modest listing in an auction catalogue for African American artifacts, he immediately knew he could be on the verge of a major discovery. After exhaustively researching the hand-written manuscript's authenticity, he found that his instincts were right. He had purchased a genuine autobiographical novel by a female slave who called herself � and her story's main character � Hannah Crafts.
Presented here unaltered and under its author's original title, The Bondwoman's Narrative tells of a self-educated young house slave who knows her life is limited by the brutalities of her society, but never suspects that the freedom of her plantation's beautiful new mistress is also at risk...or that a devastating secret will force them both to flee from slave hunters with another powerful, determined enemy at their heels. Together with Professor Gates' brilliant introduction � which includes the story of his search for the real Hannah Crafts, the biographical facts that laid the groundwork for her novel, and a fascinating look at other slave narratives of the time � The Bondwoman's Narrative offers a unique and unforgettable reading experience. In it, a voice that has never been heard rings out, and an undiscovered story at the heart of the American experience is finally told.
Africana;
The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience
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Format: Hardcover, 2144pp.
ISBN: 0465000711
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
Pub. Date: October 1999
Edition Desc: BOXED
Read more about this incredible volume
Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board led by Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Harvard professors Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. have created the first scholarly encyclopedia that takes as its scope the entire history of Africa and the African Diaspora.
A landmark in reference publishing, Africana is an incomparable one-volume encyclopedia of the black world - a vital resource for families, students, and educators everywhere.. "With entries ranging from "affirmative action" to "zydeco," Africana includes articles on the history of each African nation and every major cultural, religious, and political movement in Africa and the New World. Here you will find entries on the most prominent ethnic groups in Africa and the lives of every African and African American Nobel Laureate as well as each member of the U. S. Congressional Black Caucus. In more than three thousand articles Africana brings the entire black world into sharp focus.
Norton
Anthology of African American Literature Book & CD
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Henry Louis Gates, Nellie Y. McKay (Editor)
ISBN: 0393959082
Format: Paperback, 2665pp
Pub. Date: December 1997
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
This landmark anthology includes the work of 120 writers over two centuries, from the earliest known work by an African American, Lucy Terry's poem "Bars Fight, " to the fiction of the Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and the poems of the U.S. Poet Laureate, Rita Dove.
The Future of the
Race
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by Dr. Cornel West & Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
ISBN: 0679763783
Format: Paperback, 224pp
Pub. Date: December 1996
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
In a ground-breaking collaboration, and taking the great W. E. B. Du Bois as their model, two of our foremost African-American intellectuals address the dreams, fears, aspirations, and responsibilities of the black community - especially the black elite - on the eve of the twenty-first century. In 1903, the influential historian, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP, W. E. B. Du Bois, published his now famous essay "The Talented Tenth." "The Negro race," it began, "like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men." For the young post-Civil Rights era group of leaders, of which Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West have become such a significant part, "The Talented Tenth" was held up as a model for the social, political, and ethical roles of the new "crossover" generation. Du Bois's belief in an educated class dedicated to reform became their inspiration and their credo. Now, nearly a century after Du Bois set forth the role of the educated black American, Gates and West explore this pivotal aspect of his intellectual legacy - and, in so doing, they not only re-examine Du Bois's ideas on leadership but also respond to the challenges of the present. The problems are clear and urgent. Since the day Martin Luther King, Jr., died, the black middle class has quadrupled. Yet, simultaneously, the size of the black underclass has disproportionately and tragically skyrocketed.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man
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Paperback: 256
pages
Publisher: Vintage (February 3, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679776664
What does it mean to be black and male in 20th-century America? The notion of the unitary "black man" is as illusory as the creature conjured up by Wallace Stevens in his poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", says Gates. With these eight essays--most of which appeared originally in "The New Yorker"--the chair of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department takes a close look at some of the most extraordinary figures of our time.
Colored People: a Memoir
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Paperback: 240
pages
Publisher: Vintage (April 11, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 067973919X
From Publisher's Weekly:
In a warm, gracefully
written, moving autobiographical reminiscence, Gates, chairman of Harvard's Afro-American
Studies department, recalls growing up in the 1950s and '60s in Piedmont, W.Va., an
immigrant working-class town where the only work available to blacks at the local paper
mill was loading trucks. Devastated at age 12 by the onset of his mother's depressive
disorder, Gates joined a Baptist church and desperately pursued a ``restrictive
fundamentalism.'' While avidly embracing ``black power'' in the mid-1960s, he yearned for
approval from his father, who was ``hard on colored people.'' This engrossing narrative of
Gates's intellectual, political, sexual and emotional awakening is studded with memorable
incidents such as his discovery that his mother, years before he was born in 1950, led a
pioneering civil rights march. 40,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB alternates. (May)
Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars
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Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 20, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195083504
From David Castronovo, The Economist:
The Signifying Monkey: A
Theory of American Literary Criticism
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Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 14, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 019506075X
Eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative, challenging even when he's not altogether convincing, Mr. Gates gives black literature room to breathe, invents interpretive frameworks that enable us to experience black writing rather than label it in terms of theme or ideology. From this perspective his bookis a generous long-awaited gift. . . . One goal of Mr. Gates's book is to illuminate the power of black vernacular tradition, its consciousness of itself at extremely complex, sophisticated levels. Is it necessary or appropriate that the language of that book be foreign to the majority of the tradition's carriers? What's being lost and gained? Maybe the best news about 'The Signifying Monkey' is its willingness to struggle with such issues. Like great novels that force us to view the world differently, Mr. Gates's compelling study suggests new ways of seeing. �John Wideman, The New York Times Book Review:
Figures
in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self
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Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 30, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195060741
For over two centuries, critics and the black community have tended to approach African-American literature as simply one more front in the important war against racism, valuing slave narratives and twentieth-century works alike, primarily for their political impact. In this volume, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a leading scholar in African-American studies, attacks the notion of African-American literature as a kind of social realism. Insisting, instead, that critics focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism--the language of the text--Gates advocates the use of a close, methodical analysis of language, made possible by modern literary theory. Throughout his study, Gates incorporates the theoretical insights of critics such as Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Bloom, as he examines the modes of representation that define black art and analyzes the unspoken assumptions made in judging this literature since its inception. Ranging from the eighteenth-century poet, Phillis Wheatley, to modern writers, Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker, Gates seeks to redefine literary criticism itself, moving away from a Eurocentric notion of a hierarchical canon--mostly white, Western, and male--to foster a truly comparative and pluralistic notion of literature.
