The Black BoxA foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, by one of the nation's major literary critics. Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates Jr's legendary Harvard course in African American Studies, The Black Box Writing the Race is the story of Black self definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E.