PRESS RELEASE

Best-selling book on Claudia Jones
(Already going into second printing!!!)


Literary Synopsis:

Do you know that this black woman is buried to the Left of Karl Marx?

Left of Karl Marx, is a brand new and best selling book by Carole Boyce Davies which assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915-1964). Jones is buried in London's Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx. Importantly, Jones was the only black woman political prisoner among the communists tried during the McCarthy era. A pioneering radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist Claudia Jones's location in death gives the book its title. Boyce Davies also sees Claudia's politics, which accounted for race and gender, as also Left of Karl Marx.

According to reviewers, like writer George Lamming, author of In the Castle of My Skin and The Pleasures of Exile, who knew Claudia Jones, "Carole Boyce Davies has rendered a unique service in restoring to proper recognition the life and achievements of Trinidad-born political activist and feminist Claudia Jones. From the turbulent struggles of Harlem, U.S.A in the 1930s and 1940s to London in the 1950s and 1960s, Claudia Jones became a symbol of resistance and the standard by which others would measure their own integrity of commitment. Left of Karl Marx is the biography of an era of the most intense ideological combat- where reputations were assassinated and careers erased by a single rumor of incorrect political affiliation. Here is the story of a singular triumph whose legacy has nourished the lives of another generation."

Applicable Literary Genres: New Releases, Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, Women's Studies, Radical Studies
Pages: 312 (with exclusive photo images and historically documented newspaper clippings)

Duke University Press Durham London 2008
ISBN 978-0-8223-4116-1
**Extremely High Demand. Publisher’s first printing sold out completely in 1st month of launch and is going into its second printing.**

Author available for book signing.

About the Author: Dr. Carole Boyce Davies is an internationally distinguished scholar of Black Women's Writing, African Literature, Caribbean Tradition/ Oral and Written Literature, Cross-Cultural Feminist Theory, Black Female Identity in Brazil, Comparative Black Literature, and the African Diaspora. Prof. Carole Boyce Davies, for years a popular professor at Binghamton University, will join the faculty at the prestigious Cornell University in the Fall of '08. She is the author of Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994), and has co-edited Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (2003), The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (1999) Moving Beyond Boundaries (1995), Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature (1990), and Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (1986).

Upcoming works: The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora

For Further Information:
http://www.africandiasporastudies.com
http://www.asrc.cornell.edu/press_release_07.html
http://www.amazon.com keyword: carole boyce davies
http://www.myspace.com/caroleboycedavies

Media Contact:
Publicist, Dalia Davies 305.494.1460

All books by Dr. CBD

In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx—a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism. Read more. . .




ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA [2008] The authoritative source for information on the people, places, and events of the African diaspora, spanning five continents and five centuries.



DECOLONIZING THE ACADEMY, African Diaspora Studies [2003] by Carole Boyce Davis with Editorial Team: Meredith Gadsby, Charles Peterson, and Henrietta Williams. This work asserts that the academy is perhaps the most colonized space. As we enter the twenty-first century, this has become even clearer now that the academy is one of the primary sites for the production and re-production of ideas that serve the interests of colonizing powers. Operating at the macro level in terms of the state and at the micro level in various applications, these interests include the organization of the disciplines, the marginalization of interdisciplinary studies, the re-assertion of masculinities, and the operations of class, privilege, and hierarchy.

This collection of essays argues that African diaspora theory has the possibility of interrrupting the current colonizing process and re-engaging the decolonizing process at the level of the mind, as emphasized by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in an earlier contribution. In addition, the collection asserts that this will be an ongoing project worthy of being undertaken in a variety of fields of study as we confront the challenges of the twenty-first century.



The-African-Diaspora-African-Origins-and-New-World-Identities [1996] These essays contribute to the debate between those who believe that the African origin of blacks in western society is central to their identity and outlook and those who deny that proposition. The contributors ponder the key questions underlying that controversy. Their 33 essays are divided into five main parts: The Diaspora: Orientation and Determinations; Addressing the Constraints; Race, Gender, and Image; Creativity, Spirituality, and Identity; and Reconnecting with Africa.


BLACK WOMAN WRITING AND IDENTITY: Migrations of the subject [1994] Boyce Davies's book is exciting and informative and inclusive of most contemporary theoretical thinking that relates to the study of black women writing cross-culturally. Perhaps too inclusive. The text is congested with references to and quotations from disparate theorists who, rather than elucidate, often detract from Boyce Davies's arguments. And Boyce Davies often glosses over major differences in the methodologies favored by the theorists she examines. The positions of Barbara Christian, bell hooks, and Teresa Ebert on the impact of poststructuralism on coeval literary criticism, for example, are much more sharply differentiated than Boyce Davies would want us to know.

Left of Karl Marx by Carole Boyce-Davies

Links to: LEFT OF KARL MARX: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones: Carole Boyce Davies

Amazon.com: www.amazon.com/Left-Karl-Marx-Political-Communist/dp/0822341166

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Left of Karl Marx: The Political ...These women, these ideas--Carole Boyce Davies, Claudia Jones, Left of Karl Marx--are what intellectual life is all about. Inspiring and challenging. ...
www.amazon.com/review/product/0822341166?filterBy=addFiveStar

Books at Duke University PressLeft of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones ... In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, ...
www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4096-6

Diary of an Anxious Black Woman: To the Left, To the Left (of Karl ...To the Left, To the Left (of Karl Marx): Claudia Jones. In response to a meme by Professor Black Woman, which requested that we recall at least one woman of ...
http://diaryofananxiousblackwoman.blogspot.com/2008/02/to-left-to-left-of-karl-marx-claudia.html

Boekhandel de Rooie Rat: Davies, Carole Boyce. - Left of Karl Marx.In "Left of Karl Marx", Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, ... Jones is buried in London's Highgate Cemetary, to the left of Karl Marx - a ...
www.rooierat.nl/product_info.php/products_id/34831

American Thinker: Obama, Black Liberation Theology and Karl MarxHe has appeared to be the far left's answer to the religious right, ... Karl Marx seemed to regard religion as one of the toughest roadblocks to mounting ...
www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/obama_black_liberation_theolog_1.html