The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America

One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2024One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024A New York Public Library Top Ten Book of 2024 | A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024A New Republic Best Book of the Fall | A Time Must-Read Book of the Year"[An] extraordinary new work of history and memoir . . . Unforgettable." ―Gabriel Bump, The Washington Post"An extraordinary achievement in narrative nonfiction." ―Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star-TribuneA lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia―and sought to transform their lives.How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral h