Founded in 1955, with nearly 300 books in print, City Lights publishes cutting-edge fiction, poetry, memoirs, literary translations and books on vital social and political issues.

On this page we feature a rotating selection of titles from our backlist. For the month of July, we're featuring books that both challenge America's settler-colonial narratives and amplify Black, indigenous and latinx voices of resistance. And be sure to check out our recent releases, as well as the books we'll be publishing soon!

Imprints & series include:

Pocket Poets Series Open Media Series City Lights/Sister Spit Spotlight Series

Featured Titles from City Lights Publishers

ReTargeting Iran

David Barsamian

A timely primer on the conflict between the United States and Iran by scholars of Middle Eastern politics who advocate diplomacy and de-escalation.

Loaded
A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

"If . . . anyone at all really wants to 'get to the root causes of gun violence in America,' they will need to start by coming to terms with even a fraction of what Loaded proposes."—Los Angeles Review of Books

Green Is the New Red
An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

Will Potter

An insider tells how environmentalists and animal rights activists have become "the number one domestic terrorism threat."

Criminal of Poverty
Growing Up Homeless in America

Lisa Gray-Garcia, aka Tiny

A daughter’s struggle to keep her family alive, through poverty, homelessness and incarceration.

Free Enterprise
A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant

Michelle Cliff

In 1858, two black women meet at a restaurant and begin to plot a revolution. Mary Ellen Pleasant owns a string of hotels in San Francisco that secretly double as havens for runaway slaves. Her comrade, Annie, is a young Jamaican who has given up her...

Front Lines
Pocket Poets Number 55

Jack Hirschman

In the activist verse of this poetic warrior, always committed, the actual world is never out of mind, even in his most intimate poems. Kabbalist, populist, and communist, Hirschman has published over sixty books of his own poetry, and this...

187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross The Border
Undocuments 1971-2007

Juan Felipe Herrera

Herrera provides a fresh and accessible perspective on the crucial human rights issue of immigration through his poetry, prose, and performance. Catch the 187 Express!

Howl and Other Poems
Pocket Poets Number 4

Allen Ginsberg

The landmark, original publication of Allen Ginsberg's HOWL & Other Poems!

Codex Espangliensis
From Columbus to the Border Patrol

Enrique Chagoya, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Felicia Rice

Inspired by the pre-Hispanic codices that escaped immolation during colonial invasions, this artists' book opens out in accordion folds expanding to a length of over 21 feet. Rice has created a series of beautiful and jarring montages in which the...

American Nightmare
Facing the Challenge of Fascism

Henry A. Giroux

A far-ranging critique of the rise of authoritarianism and white nationalism in the US and the consequences for democracy.

The Meaning of Freedom
And Other Difficult Dialogues

Angela Y. Davis

Angela Davis' first book in nearly a decade, and her only book of speeches on racism, community, freedom, and politics in the United States.

A Little Matter of Genocide
Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present

Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America. Here, he explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and...