Books of Helen Cammock: I Will Keep My Soul

Helen Cammock: I Will Keep My Soul features film, poetry, performance, archival documents, and books rooted in the social history, geography, and community of New Orleans, a place the artist visited for the first time in January 2022. The books form a constellation of voices from philosophy and queer feminist theory to histories of Black American life and the city of New Orleans. Here is the complete list of the titles the artist selected:

Armstrong, Louis. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954.

Baldwin, James. Another Country. New York: Dell Press, 1962.

Baldwin, James. Early Novels and Stories. New York: Library of America, 1998.

Bridges, Ruby. Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2009.

Bridges, Ruby. I Am Ruby Bridges. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2022.

Broom, Sarah M. The Yellow House. New York: Grove Press, 2019.

Campt, Tina M. A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021.

Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.

Emanuel, Rachel L. and Alexander P. Tureaud Jr. A More Noble Cause: A. P. Tureaud and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011.

Greene, Ronnie. Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015.

Griffin, Farah Jasmine. Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II. New York: Basic Civitas, A Member of the Perseus Book Group, 2013.

Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. Edited by Robert Nemiroff. New York: Signet, 1970.

Harrison, Vashti. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2017.

Harrison, Vashti, with Kwesi Johnston. Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2019.

Herzog, Melanie. Elizabeth Catlett: In the Image of the People. Chicago: Art Institute  of Chicago; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005.

hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2000.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.

Jordan, June. Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980.

Lewis, Robin Coste. To the Realization of Perfect Happiness. New York: Knopf, 2022.

Mixed Company. Edited by Jeri Hilt and Kristina Kay Robinson. New Orleans:  New Orleans Loving Festival, 2015.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf, 1974.

Moten, Fred. *In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Parker, Morgan. Magical negro: poems. Portland, OR: Tin House Books, 2019.

Robinson, Kristina Kay. “Our Lady, Prodigy of Miracles.” In Helen Cammock: I Will Keep My Soul, edited by Andrea Andersson and Lisa Pearson. New York: Siglio Press; New Orleans: Rivers Institute; Los Angeles: California African American Museum, 2023.

Rogers, Kim Lacy. Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press, 1992.

Shaik, Fatima. Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood. New Orleans: The Historic Louisiana Collection, 2021.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

Woods, Clyde. Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. London and New York: Verso Press, 2017.