Contextualizing Angela Davis

Excavating and connecting layers of the ideological influences on Angela Davis's familial, educational, activist and academic experiences, Joy James provides an incisive transdisciplinary analysis of paths taken by the world-renowned human rights advocate, feminist and abolitionist. Adroitly avoiding hagiography while embracing inevitable contradictions, James offers nuanced context with which to reflect not only on an iconic progressive figure of our times, but indeed the imperative of critical praxis that planetary antiblackness permanently engenders. * João Costa Vargas, Professor in the Departments of Black Study and Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, USA * Joy James the activist, as well as Joy James the intellectual, is an indispensable thinker; one of five people who I trust to contextualize the 1960s/70s. This book is a compassionate biography of Angela Davis which does not slide into hagiography, written by the Ida B. Wells of our time. * Frank B. Wilderson III, Chancellor’s Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Irvine,USA * Joy James offers a crisply written intellectual and political biography of Angela Y. Davis, one of the world’s most iconic radical feminist leaders. Drawing on a range of materialist and transdisciplinary approaches, James’s argument is impeccably evidenced and thoughtful in its methods. James humanizes Davis through detailed attention to the trajectory of her life and work. This is a riveting work. * Falguni A. Sheth, Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University, USA *