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The Power of Book Design

In our first follow-up episode, Julie and Eve talk about book design with Dr. Kinohi Nishikawa, an associate professor of English and African American Studies at Princeton University and a specialist in 20th century African American literature, book history, and pop culture. They discuss how Black authors and editors have used book design to communicate with readers and exert control over their own narratives.




Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground


"Nishikawa deals with texts that do not usually receive the nuanced treatment he gives them...Street Players is an impressive achievement. It deserves—and needs—to be read."

Clues: A Journal of Detection


Go Deeper

Book Dreams: Episode 13: “Judging a Book by Its Design”

Kinohi Nishikawa

Princeton University

Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and The Making of a Literary Underground, by Kinohi Nishikawa

African American Pulp Fiction

Nico Lowry

Toni Morrison

Random House

The Black Book, by Middleton A. Harris; assisted by Morris Levitt, Roger Furman, and Ernest Smith; edited by Toni Morrison

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Kinohi Nishikawa’s Duke Talk

Oreo, by Fran Ross (1st Cover)

Oreo, by Fran Ross (2nd Cover)

Oreo, by Fran Ross (3rd Cover)

Ann Grifalconi & Greyfalcon House, Inc.

Richard Yarborough

Northeastern University Press

Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

Dick and Jane

Richard Gabriel Rummonds

Harcourt (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Citizen, by Claudia Rankine

Telephone, by Percival Everett

Eve Yohalem

Julie Sternberg

Book Dreams Podcast

Podglomerate

Lit Hub Radio

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