Europe
Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives (1999) in French
Book Review by Sandrine Jacquot This book examines how black women were depicted in French literary and cinematic works from the nineteenth century. The author examines how these works both use and construct the Black Venus narrative to portray black women as figures...
Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)
Book review by Marina Davis Olusoga unmasks the ignorance behind the narrative that England was homogeneously white until the mid 1900s when many immigrants from its former territories immigrated to England for the economic prospects created by post-war...
Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness (2012)
Book review by Marina Davis ENG: This book is a collection of essays that attempts to reconceptualize, criticize, and explore the history and attitudes around race in France in contemporary times, specifically the experiences of Black french people or “les Noirs.” The...
Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire (2019)
Book Review by Sandrine Jacquot This book gives readers insight into seven key figures whose contributions to decolonization and anti-oppression movements in the francophone world have been largely overlooked. Focusing on Caribbean and African experiences of French...
Black Tudors: The Untold Story (2017)
This book explains Tudor history through the lives of black people in Tudor England. Through surviving documentation of the ten people in the book, the text focuses on placing them within the broader history and context of Tudor culture. ‘Black Tudors’ refers to any...
A History of Pan-African Revolt (1938 & 1969)
It is hard to put this book into just one category, but let's go with Caribbean and Europe because the historian C.L.R. James was originally from Trinidad and wrote this book while being an academician in England. This book is one of the Marxist activist's seminal...
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (2012)
Tom Reiss' story of the real Count of Monte Cristo highlights the Black History behind The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Haitian-born General Alex Dumas (1762-1806) is best remembered because his French-born son, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), authored...
Managing African Portugal: The Citizen-Migrant Distinction (2009)
Kesha Fikes uses ethnography to show how EU integration shifted the socio-political interactions of African migrants and Afro-descendant citizens in Portugal. Race is presented as a discourse that runs parallel to post-colonial legacies and transnational migration...
Black Oxford: The Untold Stories of Oxford University’s Black Scholars (2014)
Book Review Written by Marina Davis This book chronicles the lives and history of Black Oxford students throughout the university’s existence. The author was driven to undertake this research after she was told that there hadn't been any Black students at the...
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (translated by Charles Lam Markmann)
Book Review by Sandrine Jacquot French: Frantz Fanon était un intellectuel et un activiste important du mouvement de décolonisation après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Né en 1925, ces œuvres ont façonné les domaines de la théorie critique, du marxisme et des études...
