The Black Utopians
Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2024
One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
Finalist for the Zora Award | Hooks National Book Award
A New York Public Library Top Ten Book of 2024 | A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024
A New Republic Best Book of the Fall | A Time Must-Read Book of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker | Literary Hub | Essence | Elle | Chicago Public Library
A 2025 Michigan Notable Book | A Booklist Best History Book of 2025
Winner of the 2025 Bridge Book Award
"[An] extraordinary new work of history and memoir . . . Unforgettable." —Gabriel Bump, The Washington Post
A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia—and sought to transform their lives.
How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?
These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine’s chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today.
Alongside the Shrine’s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism.
The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces—both ideological and physical—where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This quietly compelling blend of memoir and cultural history reimagines what freedom, community, and spiritual self-determination can look like for Black Americans. At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, author Aaron Robertson turned inward. He began to explore the intersections between the history of Promise Land, Tennessee—the tiny Black hamlet where he’d spent his childhood summers—and the rise of Black Christian Nationalism as embodied by Detroit’s Shrine of the Black Madonna. The narrative revolves around two poles: visionary preacher Albert Cleage Jr., who viewed the Bible as a radical blueprint for dismantling oppressive systems; and Robertson’s own father, whose letters and memories from a 10-year prison sentence for armed robbery shape a moving story of legacy and loss. The Black Utopians invites us to reconsider paradise not as a vision to strive for but a reality to live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Translator Robertson (Beyond Babylon) debuts with an ambitious and captivating group portrait of African American visionaries who sought to escape the "persistence of abysmal realities for black people" by setting up self-sustaining communities. Opening the narrative with a visit to his ancestral home in Promise Land, Tenn.—"one of the oldest-known settlements founded by formerly enslaved people"—Robertson then delves into the history of the migration of freedmen and their descendants (including Robertson's grandparents) from Tennessee to Detroit, and the founding of Detroit's Shrine of the Black Madonna church, a "countercultural mecca" that gained momentum in the 1960s when Black Detroiters displaced by gentrification were pushed into the surrounding neighborhood. Headed in the 1960s by "firebrand" pastor and Black Nationalist leader Albert Cleage Jr. (later known as Jaramogi Abebe), the church became a hub for utopian experimentation, such as Mtoto House, a "communal child-rearing" experiment based on socialist kindergartens in the Soviet Union and kibbutzim in Israel. Speaking to and researching former Mtoto House residents and other participants in Black utopian projects, as well as reflecting on his family's "sacred" relationship with Promise Land, Robertson paints a vivid and beguiling picture of the indomitable human yearning for a safe and nurturing home. It's a must-read.
