In Black France / France Noire, scholars, activists, and novelists address the paradox of race in France: the state does not acknowledge race as a meaningful category, but experiences of antiblack racism belie claims of color-blindness.

Originally published in 1996 by Houghton Mifflin.

France has long defined itself as a color-blind nation where racial bias has no place. Even today, the French universal curriculum for secondary students makes no mention of race or slavery, and many French scholars still resist addressing racial questions. Yet, as this groundbreaking volume shows, color and other racial markers have been major factors in French national life for more than three hundred years. The sixteen essays in The Color of Liberty offer a wealth of innovative research on the neglected history of race in France, ranging from the early modern period to the present. The Color of Liberty addresses four major themes: the evolution of race as an idea in France; representations of "the other" in French literature, art, government, and trade; the international dimensions of French racial thinking, particularly in relation to colonialism; and the impact of racial differences on the shaping of the modern French city. The many permutations of race in French history—as assigned identity, consumer product icon, scientific discourse, philosophical problem, by-product of migration, or tool in empire building—here receive nuanced treatments confronting the malleability of ideas about race and the uses to which they have been put. Contributors. Leora Auslander, Claude Blanckaert, Alice Conklin, Fred Constant, Laurent Dubois, Yaël Simpson Fletcher, Richard Fogarty, John Garrigus, Dana Hale, Thomas C. Holt, Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Dennis McEnnerney, Michael A. Osborne, Lynn Palermo, Sue Peabody, Pierre H. Boulle, Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Tyler Stovall, Michael G. Vann, Gary Wilder

M. de Rênal is the mayor of a provincial town named Verrières, who hires Julien Sorel as a private teacher for his child. Sorel desires to become a real man and follow the steps of his hero – Napoleon. The young man thinks that it is his duty to seduce the mayor’s wife and they become lovers. However, their little secret will soon be revealed. Who will find out about the love affair? What is going to happen with the two lovers? Will mayor M. de Rênal also find out or the truth will be hidden from him? Find all the answers in Stendhal’s novel "The Red and the Black" from 1830. Stendhal (1783-1842), the pseudonym of Marie-Henry Beyle, was a French writer. A pioneer of literary realism, he is best known for his novels "The Red and the Black" (1830) and "The Charterhouse of Parma" (1839).

A groundbreaking study about everyday antiblackness and its refusal in an officially raceblind France. What does it mean to be racialized-as-black in France on a daily basis? #You Know You’re Black in France When… responds to that question. Under the banner of universalism, France messages a powerful and seductive ideology of blindness to race that disappears blackened people and the antiblackness they experience. As Tricia Keaton notes, in everyday life, France is anything but raceblind. In this interdisciplinary study, drawn from a range of critical scholarship including that of Philomena Essed and Frantz Fanon, Keaton illuminates how b/Black (racialized/politicized) French people distinctly expose and refuse what she calls “raceblind republicanism.” By officially turning a blind eye to the specificity of antiblackness, the French state in fact perpetuates it, she argues, along with structural racism. Through daily life, public policies, visual culture, the private lives of individuals and families shattered by police violence, the French courts where many are fighting back, and her own experiences, Keaton charts the troubling dynamics and continuities of antiblackness in French society.

All original stories from Paris' finest authors, all translated from French. Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Didier Daeninckx, Jean-Bernard Pouy, Marc Villard, Chantal Pelletier, Patrick Pécherot, DOA, Hervé Prudon, Dominique Mainard, Salim Bachi, Jérôme Leroy, Laurent Martin, and Christophe Mercier.