Description

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By turns hilarious, candid, and heartbreaking, this powerful book takes the straitjacket off Black history.

A refreshing, insightful, sacrilegious take on African American history, Crazy as Hell explores the site of America’s greatest contradictions. The notables of this book are the runaways and the rebels, the badass and funky, the activists and the inmates—from Harriet Tubman, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali to B’rer Rabbit, Single Mamas, and Wakandans—but are they crazy as hell, or do they simply defy the expectations designated for being Black in America?

With humor and insight, scholars and writers V. Efua Prince and Hoke S. Glover III (Bro. Yao) offer brief breakdowns of one hundred influential, archetypal, and infamous figures, building a new framework that emphasizes their humanity. Including an introduction by MacArthur Fellow Reginald Dwayne Betts and peppered with little-known historical facts and PSAs that get real about the Black experience, Crazy as Hell captures the tenacious, irreverent spirit that accompanies a long struggle for freedom.

About the Author

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Hoke S. Glover III (Bro. Yao) is a poet, nonfiction writer, and the chair of the department of language, literature, and cultural studies at Bowie State University.

V. Efua Prince is a playwright, nonfiction writer, and professor of African American studies at Wayne State University.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and the founder and director of Freedom Reads.

Praise For…

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This book is extraordinary. I considered myself a master student of Black history, but after finishing the wild ride that is Crazy as Hell, I was quickly humbled. ‘True or false that a slave once won the Powerball, and then used the lottery money to buy his own freedom?’ is the kind of wild and engaging question Hoke S. Glover III and V. Efua Prince ask, and it is just one example of the kind of refreshing, new history they’ve ingeniously delivered.

— Kwame Alexander, New York Times best-selling author of The Door of No Return Trilogy and Emmy Award–winning producer of The Crossover

Sometimes we laugh to keep from crying, and that certainly will be the case on and off as you read Crazy as Hell, a brilliant approach to the telling of Black history.…[T]his book is a cultural gem.

— Khadijah Ali-Coleman, executive director of the Hurston Wright Foundation

[Crazy as Hell] is a stroke of Black genius and critical race theory sans the pomposity and posturing and corny, dry-ass lingua franca of the academe machine.

— Tony Medina, author of I Am Alfonso Jones and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy