We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For
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From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.
"Like attending a jazz concert with all of one's favorite musicians...James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Toni Morrison, and more...Glaude brilliantly takes us on an epic tour through their lives and work."
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Box: Writing the Race
We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.
Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude's unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency constrained our politics as we turned to yet another prophet-like figure. He examines his personal history and the traditions that both shape and overwhelm his own voice.
Glaude weaves anecdotes about his evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, encouraging us to reflect on the lessons of these great thinkers and address imaginatively the challenges of our day in voices uniquely our own.
Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must step out from under the shadows of past giants to build a better society--one that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.
About this Author
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including Democracy in Black and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize. He frequently appears in the media as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University.
Reviews
Such an important book...A call for people to take control of our democracy.
This is a beautiful book [that] tackles some very big ideas...An absolute call to action.
A call to rethink American leadership.
It's a must read...He makes the argument that for too long we've outsourced our responsibility to democracy, to politicians, to prophets, to heroes. While it's comforting to put the fate of the democracy in the hands of visionaries, Glaude encourages the individual to take the first steps toward reaching a freer, more equitable society.
Though they speak directly to tendencies within the ongoing Black political struggle, the wisdom these important essays offer about the true nature of democratic action is equally relevant to all Americans seeking to rebuild a ravaged democracy and its broken institutions. A powerfully eloquent, concise book.
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For is nothing short of a complete refreshment of the concept of intellectual vocation. It is a work of critical and rigorous social theory, elegant prose, and immediate political consequence. We know Glaude is prolific and pathbreaking as a scholar and highly influential as an intellectual working for the public good. But in this book, we see Glaude as we haven't previously witnessed--a public philosopher.
Reading We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For is like attending a jazz concert with all of one's favorite musicians. In his long meditation on the nature of intellectual and cultural inheritance, of nostalgia and self-possession, of prophecy and soul-craft, Glaude riffs on some of the most compelling voices in the tradition: James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Toni Morrison, and more. In one relatively short volume, he brilliantly takes us on an epic tour through their lives and work.
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