In Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, early twentieth-century statesman of Black-American discourse W.E.B. Du Bois weaves autofiction with poetry, social essay, science fiction, and Afrofuturist storytelling that presages Butler, Due, Adjei-Brenyah, Shawl, and Jemisin. Three wise men gather as a Christ child of color is born in a Georgia shanty; a reflection on World War I reframes its bloody legacy against the wages of Western imperialism; a deadly race riot in the streets of East St. Louis on the eve of the Fourth of July is revisited as part of a long continuum of exploited inequities, workers' rights violations, and race hatred; and a post-apocalyptic New York finds a Black man and white woman, possibly the last two people on Earth, on the verge of a new reckoning. Du Bois plunges twenty-first century readers into his protean and mysterious text, one that begs us to examine how the Black American experience has changed these last hundred years-and how it remains the same.

Originally published in 1920, Darkwater is reprinted here in a luxurious new hardcover edition, with full-page illustrations by Jamiel Law.