All Books
- My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love
My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love
edited by Jamaica Kincaid
$19.00Kincaid gathers a sparkling selection of new and beloved poetry and prose about each author’s favorite flora. The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays and poems on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and gardeners who write. Among the contributors are Daniel Hinkley on hellebores; Marina Warner, who remembers the Guinée rose; and Henri Cole, with the poems “Bearded Irises” and “Peonies.” Ian Frazier pulls weeds in “Memories of a Press-Gang Gardener,” and Michael Pollan defends a gothic cousin of the sunflower in “Consider the Castor Bean”; Ken Druse stalks the sexy jack-in-the-pulpit, and Elaine Scarry contemplates steep slopes of columbine. Most of the pieces are new, but Colette, Katharine S. White, William Carlos Williams, and several other old favorites also make appearances. Jamaica Kincaid, the much admired writer and a passionate gardener herself, has assembled this diverse crew and provides a spirited introduction. A wonderful gift for green thumbs, My Favorite Plant is a happy collection of fresh takes on old friends.
- Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire
Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire
$19.00The much-anticipated follow up to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility: another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms. What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm. But don't worry: there's still sex to consider—and the numerous ways sexual liberation intersects with disability justice. Plunge between these pages and you'll also find disabled sexual discovery, disabled love stories, and disabled joy. These twenty-five stunning original pieces—plus other modern classics on the subject, all carefully curated by acclaimed activist Alice Wong—include essays, photo essays, poetry, drama, and erotica: a full spectrum of the dreams, fantasies, and deeply personal realities of a wide range of beautiful bodies and minds. Disability Intimacy will free your thinking, invigorate your spirit, and delight your desires.
- Erasure
Erasure
by Percival Everett
$17.00Percival Everett's blistering satire about race and publishing, now adapted for the screen as AMERICAN FICTION, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies―his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is―under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh―and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.
- Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity)
Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity)
Michael R. Fischbach
Sold outThe 1967 Arab–Israeli War rocketed the question of Israel and Palestine onto the front pages of American newspapers. Black Power activists saw Palestinians as a kindred people of color, waging the same struggle for freedom and justice as themselves. Soon concerns over the Arab–Israeli conflict spread across mainstream black politics and into the heart of the civil rights movement itself. Black Power and Palestine uncovers why so many African Americans―notably Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali, among others―came to support the Palestinians or felt the need to respond to those who did.
Americans first heard pro-Palestinian sentiments in public through the black freedom struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. Michael R. Fischbach uncovers this hidden history of the Arab–Israeli conflict's role in African American activism and the ways that distant struggle shaped the domestic fight for racial equality. Black Power's transnational connections between African Americans and Palestinians deeply affected U.S. black politics, animating black visions of identity well into the late 1970s. Black Power and Palestine allows those black voices to be heard again today.
In chronicling this story, Fischbach reveals much about how American peoples of color create political strategies, a sense of self, and a place within U.S. and global communities. The shadow cast by events of the 1960s and 1970s continues to affect the United States in deep, structural ways. This is the first book to explore how conflict in the Middle East shaped the American civil rights movement.
- Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership
Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership
by Brea Baker
$30.00Why is less than 1% of rural land in the U.S. owned by Black people? An acclaimed writer and activist explores the impact of land theft and violent displacement on racial wealth gaps, arguing that justice stems from the literal roots of the earth.
“With heartfelt prose and unyielding honesty, Baker explores the depths of her roots and invites readers to reflect on our own.”—Donovan X. Ramsey, author of the National Book Award for Nonfiction semi-finalist When Crack Was King
To understand the contemporary racial wealth gap, we must first unpack the historic attacks on Indigenous and Black land ownership. From the moment that colonizers set foot on Virginian soil, a centuries-long war was waged, resulting in an existential dilemma: Who owns what on stolen land? Who owns what with stolen labor? To answer these questions, we must confront one of this nation’s first sins: stealing, hoarding, and commodifying the land.
Research suggests that between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. Land theft widened the racial wealth gap, privatized natural resources, and created a permanent barrier to access that should be a birthright for Black and Indigenous communities. Rooted traces the experiences of Brea Baker’s family history of devastating land loss in Kentucky and North Carolina, identifying such violence as the root of persistent inequality in this country. Ultimately, her grandparents’ commitment to Black land ownership resulted in the Bakers Acres—a haven for the family where they are sustained by the land, surrounded by love, and wholly free.
A testament to the Black farmers who dreamed of feeding, housing, and tending to their communities, Rooted bears witness to their commitment to freedom and reciprocal care for the land. By returning equity to a dispossessed people, we can heal both the land and our nation’s soul.
- Faebound: A Novel
Faebound: A Novel
by Saara El-Arifi
$20.00Two elven sisters become imprisoned in the intoxicating world of the fae, where danger and love lie in wait. Faebound is the first book in an enchanting new trilogy from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Final Strife.
“A romantic fantasy of epic proportions, crackling with magic and passion.”—Samantha Shannon, bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree
Yeeran was born on the battlefield, has lived on the battlefield, and one day, she knows, she’ll die on the battlefield.
As a warrior in the elven army, Yeeran has known nothing but violence her whole life. Her sister, Lettle, is trying to make a living as a diviner, seeking prophecies of a better future.
When a fatal mistake leads to Yeeran’s exile from the Elven Lands, both sisters are forced into the terrifying wilderness beyond their borders.
There they encounter the impossible: the fae court. The fae haven’t been seen for a millennium. But now Yeeran and Lettle are thrust into their seductive world, torn among their loyalties to each other, their elven homeland, and their hearts.
- The Night of the Storm
The Night of the Storm
by Nishita Parekh
$18.00Hurricane Harvey is about to hit Houston. Meanwhile, single mom Jia Shah is already having a rough week: her twelve-year-old son, Ishaan, has just been suspended from school for getting in a fight. Still reeling from the fallout of her divorce-their move to Houston, her family's disapproval, the struggle to make ends meet on her own-now Jia is worried about Ishaan's future, too. Will her solo parenting be enough? Doesn't a boy need a father? And now their apartment complex is under a mandatory evacuation order. Jia's sister, Seema, has invited them to hunker down in her fancy house in Sugar Land, and despite Jia's misgivings-Seema's husband Vipul has been just a little too friendly with her lately-Jia concedes it's probably the best place to keep Ishaan safe during the hurricane. With Jia's philandering ex scrutinizing her every move, all too eager to snatch back custody of Ishaan, she can't afford to make a mistake. When Vipul's brother and his wife show up at Seema's doorstep, too, it's a recipe for disaster. Grandma, the family matriarch, has never been shy about playing favorites among her sons and their wives. As the storm escalates, tensions rise quickly, and soon, someone's dead. Was it a horrible accident or is there a murderer in their midst? With no help available until the floodwaters recede in the morning, Jia must protect her son and identify the culprit before she goes down for a crime she didn't commit-or becomes the next victim. . .
- Model Home: A Novel
Model Home: A Novel
by Rivers Solomon
from $18.00Paperback Release: September 30, 2025
Welcome to Rivers Solomon's dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel.
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things―the strange and the unexplainable―began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?
Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.
- Where Shadows Meet: A Novel
Where Shadows Meet: A Novel
Patrice Caldwell
$20.00The dark and thrillingly romantic debut vampire fantasy that questions what it truly means to sacrifice for love.
You have no idea what I’ve done for love. Just as you have no idea what you may one day do.
Once long ago, a girl named Favre sacrificed her wings for love. Thana, the young goddess she so willingly gave them up for, sacrificed that same love for power. But everything has a cost.
Favre never got over the loss of her wings. And Thana’s choices led to a life of eternal night, and later, their destruction. Favre has bided her time ever since, waiting for the chance to resurrect the girl she loves who turned her into the creature she hates.
Now, a thousand years later, Leyla, the crown princess of a vampire nation, must travel to Nekros, the island of the dead, when her best friend is captured during an attack on her nation’s capital. But nothing is as it seems. The closer she gets to her goal, the more she risks awakening an ancient evil and destroying everything she holds dear.
Set in the aftermath of a war between vampires, humans, and the gods that created them, Patrice Caldwell’s devastatingly romantic fantasy debut, Where Shadows Meet, centers the heart-wrenching pain of loss and the struggle of self-discovery to ask: do we choose our fates, or do our fates choose us?
- How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community
How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community
Mia Birdsong
$18.99An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection
After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied.
It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete.
Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.
- boy maybe: poems
boy maybe: poems
WJ Lofton
$17.0051 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W. J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America
W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.
- Fresh Sets: Contemporary Nail Art From Around the World
Fresh Sets: Contemporary Nail Art From Around the World
Tembe Denton-Hurst
$30.00Polish up on the latest nail art styles with this globe-spanning book that collects the work of some of today's most creative manicurists.
Getting a fresh set of nails means different things for every customer, but these days, it's a form of self-expression like no other - and the styles continue to evolve. This book travels the world to put today's most inspired nail art at your fingertips. It features profiles of 35 professionals who are carving out a name for themselves on the streets of cities like New York, LA, Vancouver, London, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Punjab, Melbourne/Naarm, and more. New York magazine writer and beauty expert Tembe Denton-Hurst describes each nail-tech, discussing their process, aesthetic, and biggest inspirations, accompanied by photos of their work and firsthand commentary. Her engaging introduction sets the tone, mapping the rich, long history of nail art; there's also a glossary of terms to help readers understand the variety of techniques that are used. From kawaai street style to Mexican folk art, chic runway looks to over-the-top 3D sculpture, glimmering gems, slimy insects, hand painted dreamy moonscapes, and more, Fresh Sets celebrates diversity, individuality, and the limitless possibilities for making a bold statement on a tiny canvas.
- Sweet Potato Soul Vegan Vibes: 100 Soulful Plant-Based Recipes for Healthy Everyday Meals; A Cookbook
Sweet Potato Soul Vegan Vibes: 100 Soulful Plant-Based Recipes for Healthy Everyday Meals; A Cookbook
Jenné Claiborne
$27.99100 vegan recipes that bring plant-based fun to the plate for every meal of the day, from the beloved author of Sweet Potato Soul.
“Jenné Claiborne transforms divine soul food favorites into nourishing, delicious, and approachable plant-based dishes you’ll want to make on repeat.”—Carleigh Bodrug, New York Times bestselling author of PlantYou
Jenné Claiborne knows that vegans have more fun. She’s been enjoying the vibrant health, energy, and joy from eating plants—vegan vibes—for more than a decade. In that time, the vegan space has exploded, with fake meats and cheeses, fast foods, and processed treats galore. While exciting, these options don’t tap into the vibrancy of the vegetable world.
In Vegan Vibes, Jenné invites you to fall in love with cooking and eating plants, in their delicious diversity. After stints in New York City and Los Angeles, she’s returned to her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, where she is freshly inspired in her vegan kitchen by the city’s multicultural influences: collard green soup mellowed by miso, sweet potatoes crisped in the air fryer and heated with jerk seasoning, and corn ribs kissed by Korean gochujang sauce.
Jenné has transformed her favorite veggies into crowd-pleasing meals that are quick and easy enough for even the most hectic schedule. Vegan Vibes offers 100 dishes that are almost as much fun to make as they are to eat. That means laid-back whole food-based ingredient lists plus straightforward, no-fail techniques. And her unique flair for flavor elevates the simplest dish: a citrus spin on Mushroom Carnitas Tacos, Watermelon Gazpacho for the ultimate refreshing soup, and Magical Hummus packed with umami mushroom flavor.
With gorgeous photography for each recipe, Vegan Vibes includes:
• Super yummy breakfasts: Indian Tofu Scramble, Rose Tahini Granola
• Killer apps, snacks, and salads: Beet Latkes, Bali Shaved Brussels Salad
• Comforting soups: Sweet Potato Bisque
• Hearty entrees: Curried Red Bean Tacos, Korean Pulled Shroom Sandwiches, Black Bean Pizza
• Perfect beverages: Dirty Candy Sour, Pineapple Rose Sangria
• Drool-worthy desserts: Miso Caramel Banana Pudding, Cardamom Brown Sugar Pound CakeBrimming with unexpected, flavorful dishes, Vegan Vibes is the cookbook that will inspire everyone, vegan or not, to crave more plants.
- Meditations for Black Women: 75 Mindful Reflections to Help You Stay Grounded & Find Inner Peace (Self-Care for Black Women Series)
Meditations for Black Women: 75 Mindful Reflections to Help You Stay Grounded & Find Inner Peace (Self-Care for Black Women Series)
Oludara Adeeyo
Sold outAn inspiring and empowering collection of 75 mindful meditations curated for Black women everywhere to help prioritize self-love, find inner peace, and promote self-reflection.
Meditations for Black Women is a collection of 75 mindful reflections tailored uniquely to the experiences of Black women. These reflections are designed to inspire, support, and ground Black women, helping them navigate their unique everyday challenges. Each meditation is accompanied by a powerful quote from an influential Black woman, adding an extra layer of inspiration and contemplation.
The book is a testament to the power of self-reflection and meditation as wellness tools. It acknowledges the unique stressors and obstacles Black women face, such as micro- and macro-aggressions, the “strong Black woman” trope, and historical trauma. By offering tailored tools to address these unique needs, the book provides a much-needed mental health support for Black women.
Meditations for Black Women is a journey to self-discovery, self-love, and self-care as well as a celebration of Black womanhood and a testament to the strength, resilience, and beauty of Black women.
- Somebody's Wife
Somebody's Wife
Robbi Renee
Sold out“Jemma had me at hello... but she was somebody’s wife.”
Dr. Ezekiel Green is ready to make a fresh start in a new city after
the divorce from his high school sweetheart. What was supposed to be a
professional business dinner with a future colleague quickly trans‐
formed into a love at first sight encounter... or so he thought. Dr.
Jemma Holiday was spirited, brilliant, beautiful, and another man’s
wife.“Doesn’t he know I’m somebody’s wife? Does he care? Shit... do I care?”
Dr. Jemma Holiday had the perfect life, love, marriage, and family in
the public’s eye. But behind closed doors, betrayal and mundane
monotony were suffocating. A marriage of situational necessity. What
was supposed to be a pleasurable evening out with her sorority sisters,
abruptly transitioned to the one-night stand of her dreams... or so she
thought.What’s the worst that could happen?
- Finding My Way Outta Darkness: A Story Of Unconditional Love
Finding My Way Outta Darkness: A Story Of Unconditional Love
Briyanna Michelle
$17.99Special Ops Agent Brian McClain finds himself teaming up with the FBI to end the sex-trafficking ring in the city. He doesn’t expect to see his first love Makayla Scott after so many years. The one that got away and he is reminded of the fact that she doesn’t remember the time they spent together. Brian is determined to help Makayla not only gain her freedom but win her heart in the process.
- Love Spells Trouble
Love Spells Trouble
Nia Davenport
$19.99You Should See Me in a Crown meets Black girl magic--literally--in this cozy romantasy about a reluctant witch caught up in a faking dating scheme.
Witches and humans have always had issues. Cayden is well aware of that: her witch mom was shunned by her high-society parents when she fell in love with a Cayden's human dad. And now, the family's business is in trouble due to wealthy witches gentrifying her historic Texas neighborhood. So when Cayden realizes she unknowingly went on a date with Coven it-boy Khy Carter, it feels like things can't get any worse. But then her father's bakery has an influx of new customers, and a solution to her family's problems appears: Cayden absolutely cannot be with a Coven boy, but that doesn't mean she can't pretend to be.
Suddenly, Cayden is thrown into the Coven system she grew up despising, but it turns out embracing this side of herself is actually…fun. And as she and Khy spend more time together, their fake dating may just lead to real feelings. But even though she's doing this for her family, Cayden knows she's also betraying them. Her parents may have put love before everything else, but is Cayden willing to do the same?
- Wild Sweet Love
Wild Sweet Love
Beverly Jenkins
$8.99Teresa July has led a hard life, but now she has a chance to put her train robbing past behind her. Armed with a new job as a cook to one of Philadelphia's elite families, Teresa is determined to start her life anew, and nothing––not even her boss's stuck–up (and far too handsome) son––is going to stand in her way.
Madison Nance is sick of his mother taking in women from the wrong side of the tracks, just to see them turn on her generosity. That's why it's up to him to keep a close eye on Teresa's every move. At least, that's the only logical explanation for why he can't get the young woman out of his mind.
But when a woman from Madison's past threatens Teresa's future, the two reluctant lovers must join forces is they're ever going to have a chance at happiness.
- Spirits Come from Water: An Introduction to Ancestral Veneration and Reclaiming African Spiritual Practices
Spirits Come from Water: An Introduction to Ancestral Veneration and Reclaiming African Spiritual Practices
by Ehime Ora
$17.99A thoughtful guide to ancestral veneration, with a focus on the importance of reclaiming African Spiritual practices as an act of liberation.
Your ancestors remember you. Do you remember them? They have been waiting for this very moment in time.
In this book, Ifa and Orisa priestess Ehime Ora shares the importance of connection to the ancestors, and to one’s spiritual roots. There’s a certain type of radical healing that takes place when we recommend to our ancestral veneration and follow through with their wisdom.
Providing healing through the written word, Ehime walks you though the reclamation of African Spiritual practices, discussing the spiritual renaissance occurring in the African community, and includes interviews with elders of the rich traditions. She also provides tangible spiritual tools so that you can incorporate ancestral veneration in your life: how to properly set up and work with an ancestral altar, the importance of spiritual hygiene, and bringing forth the concept of the ori, or the higher self.
- Resting Bitch Face: Poems
Resting Bitch Face: Poems
Taylor Byas
$16.95An Audacious Book Club Pick
The author of the award-winning national bestseller I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times returns with a new poetry collection that transforms the Black female speaker from object, artistic muse, and victim, to subject, critic, and master of her story
Resting Bitch Face is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and film criticism, and for writers interested in work that finds a middle ground between poetry and prose. Taylor Byas uses some of our most common ways of “watching” throughout history (painting, films, sculpture, and photographs) to explore how these mediums shape Black female subjectivity.
From the examination of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin, Sally Mann, and Nan Goldin, Byas displays her mastery of the poetic form by engaging in intimate and inventive writing. Fluctuating between watcher and watched, the speaker of these poems uses mirrors and reflections to flip the script and talk back to histories of art, text, photography, relationships, and men. From Polaroids to gesso primer to sculpture, Byas creates a world in which the artist calls out and the muse responds. For not only does she enter the world of the long-revered classic artist, but she also infuses her poems with such iconic pop-culture works as The Joker, WandaVision, and Last Tango in Paris.
Ultimately, while watching lies at the crux of this collection’s poetic concerns, the goal of the speaker is to query her own self, rendering these poems as invitations for readers to question their own.
- The Coldest Winter Ever
The Coldest Winter Ever
by Sister Souljah
$17.00I came busting into the world during one of New York's worst snowstorms, so my mother named me Winter. Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets like the curves of her own body. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn't want to go, her street smarts and seductive skills are put to the test of a lifetime. Unwilling to lose, this ghetto girl will do anything to stay on top.
- Gumbo Ya Ya
Gumbo Ya Ya
by Aurielle Marie
Sold outWinner of the 2020 Cave Canem Prize
Gumbo Ya Ya, Aurielle Marie’s stunning debut, is a cauldron of hearty poems exploring race, gender, desire, and violence in the lives of Black gxrls, soaring against the backdrop of a contemporary South. These poems are loud, risky, and unapologetically rooted in the glory of Black gxrlhood. The collection opens with a heartrending indictment of injustice. What follows is a striking reimagination of the world, one where no Black gxrl dies “by the barrel of the law” or “for loving another Black gxrl.” Part familial archival, part map of Black resistance, Gumbo Ya Ya catalogs the wide gamut of Black life at its intersections, with punching cultural commentary and a poetic voice that holds tenderness and sharpness in tandem. It asks us to chew upon both the rich meat and the tough gristle, and in doing so we walk away more whole than we began and thoroughly satisfied.
- To Die for the People
To Die for the People
by Huey Newton
Sold outA fascinating, first-person account of a historic era in the struggle for black empowerment in America.A fascinating, first-person account of a historic era in the struggle for black empowerment in America.
Long an iconic figure for radicals, Huey Newton is now being discovered by those interested in the history of America's social movements. Was he a gifted leader of his people or a dangerous outlaw? Were the Black Panthers heroes or terrorists?
Whether Newton and the Panthers are remembered in a positive or a negative light, no one questions Newton's status as one of America's most important revolutionaries. To Die for the People is a recently issued classic collection of his writings and speeches, tracing the development of Newton's personal and political thinking, as well as the radical changes that took place in the formative years of the Black Panther Party.
With a rare and persuasive honesty, To Die for the People records the Party's internal struggles, rivalries and contradictions, and the result is a fascinating look back at a young revolutionary group determined to find ways to deal with the injustice it saw in American society. And, as a new foreword by Elaine Brown makes eminently clear, Newton's prescience and foresight make these documents strikingly pertinent today.Huey Newton was the founder, leader and chief theoretician of the Black Panther Party, and one of America’s most dynamic and important revolutionary philosophers.
"Huey P. Newton's To Die for the People represents one of the most important analyses of the politics of race, black radicalism, and democracy written during the civil rights-Black Power era. It remains a crucial and indispensible text in our contemporary efforts to understand the continuous legacy of social movements of the 1960s and 1970s."
—Peniel Joseph, author of Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America"Huey P. Newton's name, and more importantly, his history of resistance and struggle, is little more than a mystery for many younger people. The name of a third-rate rapper is more familiar to the average Black youth, and that's hardly surprising, for the public school system is invested in ignorance, and Huey P. Newton was a rebel — and more, a Black Revolutionary . . . who gave his best to the Black Freedom movement; who inspired millions of others to stand."
—Mumia Abu Jamal, political prisoner and author of Jailhouse Lawyers"Newton's ability to see theoretically, beyond most individuals of his time, is part of his genius. The opportunity to recognize that genius and see its applicability to our own times is what is most significant about this new edition."
—Robert Stanley Oden, former Panther, Professor of Government, California State University, Sacramento - The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
$14.00Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.
A Penguin Classic
First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women’s pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women’s body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde’s testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action. - Tar Baby
Tar Baby
by Toni Morrison
$35.00The author of Song of Solomon now sets her extraordinary novelistic powers on a striking new course. Tar Baby, audacious and hypnotic, is masterful in its mingling of tones—of longing and alarm, of urbanity and a primal, mythic force in which the landscape itself becomes animate, alive with a wild, dark complicity in the fates of the people whose drama unfolds. It is a novel suffused with a tense and passionate inquiry, revealing a whole spectrum of emotions underlying the relationships between black men and women, white men and women, and black and white people.
The place is a Caribbean island. In their mansion overlooking the sea, the cultivated millionaire Valerian Street, now retired, and his pretty, younger wife, Margaret, go through rituals of living, as if in a trance. It is the black servant couple, who have been with the Streets for years—the fastidious butler, Sydney, and his strong yet remote wife—who have arranged every detail of existence to create a surface calm broken only by sudden bursts of verbal sparring between Valerian and his wife. And there is a visitor among them—a beautiful young black woman, Jadine, who is not only the servant’s dazzling niece, but the protegée and friend of the Streets themselves; Jadine, who has been educated at the Sorbonne at Valerian’s expense and is home now for a respite from her Paris world of fashion, film and art.
Through a season of untroubled ease, the lives of these five move with a ritualized grace until, one night, a ragged, starving black American street man breaks into the house. And, in a single moment, with Valerian’s perverse decision not to call for help but instead to invite the man to sit with them and eat, everything changes. Valerian moves toward a larger abdication. Margaret’s delicate and enduring deception is shattered. The butler and his wife are forced into acknowledging their illusions. And Jadine, who at first is repelled by the intruder, finds herself moving inexorably toward him—he calls himself Son; he is a kind of black man she has dreaded since childhood; uneducated, violent, contemptuous of her privilege.
As Jadine and Son come together in the loving collision they have both welcomed and feared, the novel moves outward—to the Florida backwater town Son was raised in, fled from, yet cherishes; to her sleek New York; then back to the island people and their protective and entangling legends. As the lovers strive to hold and understand each other, as they experience the awful weight of the separate worlds that have formed them—she perceiving his vision of reality and of love as inimical to her freedom, he perceiving her as the classic lure, the tar baby set out to entrap him—all the mysterious elements, all the highly charged threads of the story converge. Everything that is at risk is made clear: how the conflicts and dramas wrought by social and cultural circumstances must ultimately be played out in the realm of the heart.
Once again, Toni Morrison has given us a novel of daring, fascination, and power. - Carla and the Christmas Cornbread
Carla and the Christmas Cornbread
Sold outIn this heartwarming tale inspired by her childhood, superstar chef and TV host Carla Hall shares the story of young Carla, who eats a sugar cookie meant for Santa on the night before Christmas and tries to make things right.
Christmas is Carla’s favorite holiday of the year. She goes to her grandparents’ house and eats grandma’s special recipe—a perfectly delicious cornbread. She listens to her grandpa Doc’s marvelous stories about traveling the world. And, best of all, she spends lots of time with her family.
But when Carla accidentally takes a bite out of Santa’s sugar cookie, she thinks she’s ruined Christmas. How will Santa know to stop at their house if they don’t leave him a midnight snack? With her grandmother’s help, Carla comes up with a plan, but will it be enough to save Christmas?Christmas is Carla’s favorite holiday of the year. She goes to her grandparents’ house and eats grandma’s special recipe—a perfectly delicious cornbread. She listens to her grandpa Doc’s marvelous stories about traveling the world. And, best of all, she spends lots of time with her family. But when Carla accidentally takes a bite out of Santa’s sugar cookie, she thinks she’s ruined Christmas. How will Santa know to stop at their house if they don’t leave him a midnight snack? With her grandmother’s help, Carla comes up with a plan, but will it be enough to save Christmas? - Patina
Patina
by Jason Reynolds
$7.99A New York Times Notable Children’s Book
A newbie to the track team, Patina must learn to rely on her teammates as she tries to outrun her personal demons in this follow-up to the National Book Award finalist Ghost by New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds.
Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team—a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves.
Patina, or Patty, runs like a flash. She runs for many reasons—to escape the taunts from the kids at the fancy-schmancy new school she’s been sent to since she and her little sister had to stop living with their mom. She runs from the reason WHY she’s not able to live with her “real” mom any more: her mom has The Sugar, and Patty is terrified that the disease that took her mom’s legs will one day take her away forever. So Patty’s also running for her mom, who can’t. But can you ever really run away from any of this? As the stress builds up, it’s building up a pretty bad attitude as well. Coach won’t tolerate bad attitude. No day, no way. And now he wants Patty to run relay…where you have to depend on other people? How’s she going to do THAT? - The Trees
The Trees
by Percival Everett
$16.00An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone
Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.
The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse. - Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art
Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art
by Gregory Sholette, Chloë Bass. & Social Practice Queens
Sold out"Art as Social Action . . . is an essential guide to deepening social art practices and teaching them to students." —Laura Raicovich, president and executive director, Queens Museum
Art as Social Action is both a general introduction to and an illustrated, practical textbook for the field of social practice, an art medium that has been gaining popularity in the public sphere. With content arranged thematically around such topics as direct action, alternative organizing, urban imaginaries, anti-bias work, and collective learning, among others, Art as Social Action is a comprehensive manual for teachers about how to teach art as social practice.Along with a series of introductions by leading social practice artists in the field, valuable lesson plans offer examples of pedagogical projects for instructors at both college and high school levels with contributions written by prominent social practice artists, teachers, and thinkers, including:
- Mary Jane Jacob
- Maureen Connor
- Brian Rosa
- Pablo Helguera
- Jen de los Reyes
- Jeanne van Heeswick
- Jaishri Abichandani
- Loraine Leeson
- Ala Plastica
- Daniel Tucker
- Fiona Whelan
- Bo Zheng
- Dipti Desai
- Noah Fischer
Lesson plans also reflect the ongoing pedagogical and art action work of Social Practice Queens (SPQ), a unique partnership between Queens College CUNY and the Queens Museum. - The Getaway
The Getaway
by Lamar Giles
$12.99Jay is living his best life at Karloff Country, one of the world’s most famous resorts. He’s got his family, his crew, and an incredible after-school job at the property’s main theme park. Life isn’t so great for the rest of the world, but when people come here to vacation, it’s to get away from all that.
As things outside get worse, trouble starts seeping into Karloff. First, Jay’s friend Connie and her family disappear in the middle of the night and no one will talk about it. Then the richest and most powerful families start arriving, only... they aren’t leaving. Unknown to the employees, the resort has been selling shares in an end-of-the-world oasis. The best of the best at the end of days. And in order to deliver the top-notch customer service the wealthy clientele paid for, the employees will be at their total beck and call.
Whether they like it or not.
Yet Karloff Country didn’t count on Jay and his crew--and just how far they’ll go to find out the truth and save themselves. But what’s more dangerous: the monster you know in your home or the unknown nightmare outside the walls?
- Promise Boys
Promise Boys
by Nick Brooks
$12.99The Hate U Give meets One of Us Is Lying in this trailblazing, blockbuster YA mystery about three teen boys of color who must investigate their principal’s murder to clear their own names—for fans of Angie Thomas, Jason Reynolds, and Karen McManus.
The Urban Promise Prep School vows to turn boys into men. As students, J.B., Ramón, and Trey are forced to follow the prestigious "program's" strict rules. Extreme discipline, they’ve been told, is what it takes to be college bound, to avoid the fates of many men in their neighborhoods. This, the Principal Moore Method, supposedly saves lives.
But when Moore ends up murdered and the cops come sniffing around, the trio emerges as the case's prime suspects. With all three maintaining their innocence, they must band together to track down the real killer before they are arrested. But is the true culprit hiding among them? This exquisitely taut thriller shines a glaring light on how the system too often condemns Black and Latinx teen boys to failure before they’ve even had a chance at success. - Seen, Loved and Heard: A Guided Journal for Feeding the Soul
Seen, Loved and Heard: A Guided Journal for Feeding the Soul
by Tabitha Brown
$19.99A beautiful, inspiring, full-color companion journal to Tabitha Brown’s #1 New York Times bestselling Feeding the Soul (Because It’s My Business).
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