BLACK STAR, CRESCENT MOON:
The Muslim International and Black Freedom Beyond America
By Sohail Daulatzai
University of Minnesota Press | 288 pages | 2012
ISBN 978-0-8166-7586-9 | paperback | $22.50
ISBN 978-0-8166-7585-2 | cloth | $67.50
Black Star, Crescent Moon offers a new perspective on the political and cultural history of Black internationalism from the 1950s to the present. Sohail Daulatzai maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, showing how Black artists and activists imagined themselves as part of a global majority, connected to larger communities of resistance.
PRAISE FOR BLACK STAR, CRESCENT MOON:
"Timely and provocative, this globe-trotting book takes you down an almost forgotten road of Black freedom: the one that connects the struggles of the burning ghettos of America to the rage against imperial power in Muslim lands. Shining light on the artists and activists who helped pave that road, Black Star, Crescent Moon vividly shows that Black freedom struggles, whether through art or politics, are always global in scope. Written with an urgency that our times demand, my man Sohail does what we in hip-hop have been doing for decades: uncovering histories, drawing connections, and trying to make people move. Rebel reading for right now!" —Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def)
"Sohail Daulatzai’s Black Star, Crescent Moon is a pathbreaking, genre-shattering work of breathtaking scholarship. It is a work of poetic verve and brilliant analysis that will forever change how we view the international implications and global sites of black freedom struggles." —Michael Eric Dyson
"Black Star, Crescent Moon is a tour de force that has restored my faith in cultural studies. The book is a stunning achievement and Daulatzai reveals an intellectual virtuosity and originality few can match. His formulation of a ‘Muslim International’ alone compels us to rethink Muslim Third World opposition and its relationship to the black freedom struggle." —Robin D. G. Kelley
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sohail Daulatzai is associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is coeditor of Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic.
