A decade after The Souls of Black Folk made his name, Du Bois returned with something stranger and angrier: Darkwater mixes essay, autobiography, poetry and short fiction into one sustained argument against racism at home and colonialism abroad.
Written in the aftermath of the First World War, it connects the treatment of Black Americans directly to the treatment of colonised peoples worldwide, a link few of Du Bois’s contemporaries were willing to draw so plainly. Essential further reading for anyone who started with Souls.
