All Books
- Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem by bell hooks
Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem by bell hooks
by bell hooks
Sold outWorld-renowned scholar and visionary bell hooks takes an in-depth look at one of the most critical issues facing African Americans: a collective wounded self-esteem that has prevailed from slavery to the present day.
Why do so many African-Americans—whether privileged or poor, urban or suburban, young or old—live in a state of chronic anxiety, fear, and shame? Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem breaks through collective denial and dares to tell this truth—that crippling low self-esteem has reached epidemic proportions in our lives and in our diverse communities. With visionary insight, hooks exposes the underlying reality that it has been difficult—if not impossible—for our nation to create a culture that promotes and sustains healthy self-esteem. Without self-esteem people begin to lose their sense of agency. They feel powerless. They feel they can only be victims. The need for self-esteem never goes away. But it is never too late for any of us to acquire the healthy self-esteem that is needed for a fulfilling life.
hooks gets to the heart and soul of the African-American identity crisis, offering critical insight and hard-won wisdom about what it takes to heal the scars of the past, promote and maintain self-esteem, and lay down the roots for a grounded community with a prosperous future. She examines the way historical movements for racial uplift fail to sustain our quest for self-esteem.
Moving beyond a discussion of race, she identifies diverse barriers keeping us from well-being: the trauma of abandonment, constant shaming, and the loss of personal integrity. In highlighting the role of desegregation, education, the absence of progressive parenting, spiritual crisis, or fundamental breakdowns in communication between black women and men, bell hooks identifies mental health as the new revolutionary frontier—and provides guidance for healing within the black community. - Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power
Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power
Sold outA nuanced profile, in image and text, of the great Black Power leader at the exhilarating moment of the movement’s ascendancy
Gordon Parks’ 1967 Life magazine essay “Whip of Black Power” is a nuanced profile of the young, controversial civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael gained national attention and inspired media backlash when he issued the call for Black Power in Greenwood, Mississippi, in June 1966. Parks shadowed him from the fall of 1966 to the spring of 1967, as Carmichael gave speeches, headed meetings and promoted the growing Black Power movement. Parks’ photos and writing addressed Carmichael’s intelligence and humor, presenting the whole man behind the headline-making speeches and revealing his own advocacy of Black Power and its message of self-determination and love.
Stokely Carmichael and Black Power delves into Parks’ groundbreaking presentation of Carmichael, with analysis of his images and accompanying text about the charismatic leader. Lisa Volpe explores Parks’ complex understanding of the movement and its leader, and Cedric Johnson frames Black Power within the heightened political moment of the late 1960s. Carmichael’s own voice is represented through a reprint of his important 1966 essay “What We Want.”
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a photographer, filmmaker, musician and author whose 50-year career focused on American culture, social justice, the civil rights movement and the Black American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942, which led to a position with the Farm Security Administration. In 1969 he became the first Black American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, and his next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a film genre. - Ordinary Notes
Ordinary Notes
by Christina Sharpe
from $23.00The critically acclaimed author of In the Wake, "Christina Sharpe is a brilliant thinker who attends unflinchingly to the brutality of our current arrangements . . . and yet always finds a way to beauty and possibility" (Saidiya Hartman).
A singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal—with present realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. The themes and tones that echo through these pages, sometimes about language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, art, photography, and literature—always attend, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life.
At the heart of Ordinary Notes is the indelible presence of the author’s mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. “I learned to see in my mother’s house,” writes Sharpe. “I learned how not to see in my mother’s house . . . My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words.” Using these gifts and other ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to the page. She practices an aesthetic of "beauty as a method,” collects entries from a community of thinkers toward a “Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness,” and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a brilliant new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces. - Playing in the Dark
Playing in the Dark
by Toni Morrison
$16.00An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner
Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition.
Written with the artistic vision that has earned the Nobel Prize-winning author a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark is an invaluable read for avid Morrison admirers as well as students, critics, and scholars of American literature. - Love
Love
by Toni Morrison
$16.00In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching. - Dr. No: A Novel
Dr. No: A Novel
by Percival Everett
$16.00A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising
The protagonist of Percival Everett’s puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing” in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for “nothing.”) He is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing he’ll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks.
With the help of the brainy and brainwashed astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala Kitu learns that Sill’s desire to become a literal Bond villain originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. As Sill says, “Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it’s time we gave nothing back.”
Dr. No is a caper with teeth, a wildly mischievous novel from one of our most inventive, provocative, and productive writers. That it is about nothing isn’t to say that it’s not about anything. In fact, it’s about villains. Bond villains. And that’s not nothing.
- Please, Puppy, Please
Please, Puppy, Please
by Tonya Lewis Lee
$18.99From Academy Award–winning filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Beacon Award–winning producer Tonya Lewis Lee comes an energetic picture book full of tail-wagging fun.
Away from the gate,
puppy puppy, please, puppy.
Oh wait, puppy, wait,
please, please, please,
please...
What happens when a couple of high-energy toddlers meet their match in an adventurous pup who has no plans of letting up? Irresistible illustrations by Coretta Scott King Award winner Kadir Nelson unleash countless memorable moments of toddlerhood and puppyhood, which families with four-legged friends will enjoy over and over again. - Voguing and the Ballroom Scene of New York 1989-92: Photographs
Voguing and the Ballroom Scene of New York 1989-92: Photographs
by Chantal Regnault
Sold outHarlem’s gay ball subculture of the late 1980s is superbly documented in this trove of previously unseen photographs.
In 1989, Malcolm McLaren had his only number one hit with a single called "Deep in Vogue." Early the next year, Madonna had one of the biggest hits of her career, with the single "Vogue," and when Jennie Livingston's film Paris Is Burning arrived in cinemas the same year, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the mainstream got hip to New York City's extraordinary ball culture, from which the film and McLaren and Madonna's songs had arisen. Paris Is Burning documented a gay ballroom scene that emerged in Harlem in the mid-1980s, which drew African American and Latino gay and transgender communities to compete against one another for their dancing skills, the verisimilitude of their drag and their ability to walk on the runway. Photographer Chantal Regnault spent many years recording this scene, from which the dance style known as voguing arose. A visual riot of fashion, polysexuality and subversive style, Voguing and the Ballroom Scene of New York 1989–1992 is also an extraordinary document on sexuality and race. The wild years of voguing are vividly captured in hundreds of Regnault's amazing, previously unpublished photographs. The book also features interviews with key figures from the movement, essays, flyers and ephemera.
Photographer and documentarist Chantal Regnault was born in France. She left Paris after the 1968 uprisings and lived in New York for the next 15 years. At the end of the 1980s she became immersed in Harlem's voguing scene. Also around this time, Regnault developed an interest in Haitian voodoo culture and began to divide her time between Haiti and New York. Her widely published photographs have appeared in major magazines and newspapers, including Vanity Fair and the New York Times. - Abeni's Song
Abeni's Song
by P. Djèlí Clark
$19.99Like a West African and African Diaspora-inspired Spirited Away, Abeni's Song follows a reluctant apprentice witch out of her village and into a world of spirits on a quest to save her friends. This is P. Djèlí Clark's kids' debut.
On the day of the spirits festival, the old woman who lives in the forest appears in Abeni's village with a terrible message:
You ignored my warnings. It’s too late to run. They are coming.
The old woman hasn't come to save them, only to collect one child as payment for her years of service and protection. When warriors with burning blades storm the village and a man with a cursed flute plays an impossibly alluring song, everyone Abeni has ever known and loved is captured and marched toward far-off ghost ships set for even more distant lands.
But not Abeni. Abeni escapes the warriors in the clutches of the old woman, magically whisked into the forest away from all she’s ever known. And there she begins her unwanted magical apprenticeship, her journey to escape the witch, and her impossible mission to bring her people home.
Abeni’s Song is the beginning of a timeless, enchanting fantasy adventure about a reluctant apprentice, a team of spirit kids, and the town they set out to save from the evil Witch Priest who enslaved Abeni’s people. - Natural Beauty: A Novel
Natural Beauty: A Novel
by Ling Ling Huang
$18.00Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.
Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.
A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth. - Witness: Stories
Witness: Stories
by Jamel Brinkley
$18.00From a National Book Award finalist, Witness is an elegant, insistent narrative of actions taken and not taken.
What does it mean to take action? To bear witness? What does it cost?
In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters—from children to grandmothers to ghosts—live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect, to remember, to stand up for, and to really see each other, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape not only their own futures but the legacies and prospects of their families and their city.
In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness while those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon.
With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully, seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city. - The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture
by Vincent Woodard
Sold outWinner of the 2015 LGBT Studies Award presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation
Unearths connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture that has largely been ignored until now
Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person’s claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence. The Delectable Negro explores these connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture.
Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith’s slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. Woodard uses these texts to unpack how slaves struggled not only against social consumption, but also against endemic mechanisms of starvation and hunger designed to break them. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption. - You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel
You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel
by Alvaro Enrigue
$18.00From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story.
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma – who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods – the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.
You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream. - Toni Morrison: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations
Toni Morrison: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations
edited by Nikki Giovanni
$16.99“Knowledge is what’s important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it.” — TONI MORRISON
In this wide-ranging collection of thought-provoking interviews — including her first and last — Toni Morrison (whom President Barrack Obama called a “national treasure”) details not only her writing life, but also her other careers as a teacher, and as a publisher, as well as the gripping story of her family. In fact, Morrison reveals here that her Nobel Prize-winning novels, such as Beloved and Song of Solomon, were born out of her family’s stories — such as those of her great-grandmother, born a slave, or her father, escaping the lynch mobs of the South. With an introduction by her close friend, poet Nikki Giovani, Morrison hereby weaves yet another fascinating and inspiring narrative — that of herself. - Coming Home
Coming Home
By Brittney Griner
$28.00On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the WNBA offseason playing for the Russian women’s basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, a security checkpoint became her gateway to hell when she was arrested for mistakenly carrying under one gram of medically prescribed hash oil. Brittney’s world was violently upended in a crisis she has never spoken in detail about publicly—until now.
In Coming Home, Brittney finally shares the harrowing details of her sudden arrest days before Russia invaded Ukraine; her bewilderment and isolation while navigating a foreign legal system amid her trial and sentencing; her emotional and physical anguish as the first American woman ever to endure a Russian penal colony while the #WeAreBG movement rallied for her release; the chilling prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; and her remarkable rise from hostage to global spokesperson on behalf of America’s forgotten. In haunting and vivid detail, Brittney takes readers inside the horrors of a geopolitical nightmare spanning ten months.
And yet Coming Home is more than Brittney’s journey from captivity to freedom. In an account as gripping as it is poignant, she shares how her deep love for Cherelle, her college sweetheart and wife of six years, anchored her during their greatest storm; how her family’s support pulled her back from the brink; and how hundreds of letters from friends and neighbors lent her resolve to keep fighting. Coming Home is both a story of survival and a testament to love—the bonds that brought Brittney home to her family, and at last, to herself. - The Outsider Advantage : Because You Don't Need to Fit in to Win
The Outsider Advantage : Because You Don't Need to Fit in to Win
by Ciera Rogers
$29.00From the fashion mogul and entrepreneur behind Babes, an empowering memoir about turning what makes you different into the foundation of your success
Ciera Rogers is known for being an “Outsider”—and she likes it that way. As the founder and CEO of a multi-million-dollar brand that caters to curvy women of all shades, worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian and championed by Beyoncé, Ciera has rallied the very women the fashion industry is designed to ignore around the radical idea that what makes you different is actually your superpower.
The Outsider Advantage is for Outsiders like her: the dreamers, doers, and go-getters that society continuously overlooks and underestimates, but who are uniquely equipped to achieve glass-shattering success.
In this bold and inspiring memoir, Ciera shares the moments in her life that left the biggest impact—being kidnapped at a young age by her estranged father, running hustles in strip clubs, living in her mom’s red Jeep, daring to post her first outfit for sale on Instagram, hitting seven-figures, and buying a home—and unearths the powerful lessons she has taken away from her past and her unorthodox rise, like how to harness what you already have and how to use your trauma as a motivator. She also speaks to feelings of millennial rage, as on her journey, she came to realize that the American Dream is a lie. But she didn’t allow that to stop her from outmaneuvering the system to finally live the life she wanted.
Arguing that what the world calls limitations—lack of connections, resources, fancy degrees, or even the “right” look—are actually our biggest competitive advantages, Ciera teaches anyone who has ever been overlooked, ignored or underestimated how to embrace their Outsider status to find unstoppable success. - Outdrawn: A Sapphic Rivals to Lovers Romance
Outdrawn: A Sapphic Rivals to Lovers Romance
$14.99It isn’t always lonely at the top.
Noah Blue’s finally got her foot in the door. After clawing her way to the top of the charts with her webcomic, she’s garnered enough attention to earn a full-time position at a comic company re-launching their cult classic comic: Queen Leisah.
Queen Leisah is predicted to be an instant bestseller with movie deals already in the making. Things are falling into place. There’s nowhere to go but up…as soon as she gets one person out of her way.
Sage Montgomery has always been the best artist in every building she’s stepped foot in. Raw talent’s gotten her webcomic to the top of the charts every month for the past eight years. She’s been the best for as long as she can remember. Sure, her career has plateaued but that can be fixed with a big, mainstream comic.
She was promised full creative control over Leisah. Instead, she got a shared credit with the one artist who’s been breathing down her neck since college. The one artist who has a fighting chance of being better than her. Sage and Noah have to work as a team — or, at least appear to work as a team. They thought the hardest part of the relaunch would be drawing together. But that’s easy in comparison to resisting their feelings for each other.
- Be Mine Forever
Be Mine Forever
Kennedy Ryan
Sold outFrom the bestselling author of Queen Move, a mysterious artist's dark past stands in the way of a second chance at love in this sizzling suburban romance.
Can a secret crush become the love of a lifetime?
Jo Walsh has loved Cameron Mitchell for as long as she can remember. Whether front and center in her life or on the periphery, the tall, brooding artist has made his presence seductively and irresistibly known. But whenever they start to get close, Cam pulls away. Jo's tired of keeping her feelings in a box Cam is afraid to open. If he wants her, he'll have to prove it. And if he doesn't, Jo will need to know the real reason why . . .
How do you walk away from your soul mate? Cam wishes he knew. No matter how far he runs from Jo, he can't resist looking back at the silver eyes that seem to see right through him. But as well as Jo thinks she understands Cam, the dark truth about his past is something she shouldn't have to handle. Cam's sure that setting Jo free is the right thing to do. Too bad his heart has other ideas . . .
- Pretty: A Memoir
Pretty: A Memoir
by KB Brookins
$28.00By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.
Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.
“I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body,” Brookins writes. “Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I’m perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can’t change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says ‘female,’ and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean—to be a girl-turned-man when you’re something else entirely?”
Informed by KB Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency—whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as “other”
- Reclaim Yourself: The Homecoming Workbook
Reclaim Yourself: The Homecoming Workbook
by Thema Bryant, Ph.D.
$18.00From leading mental health expert Dr. Thema Bryant, an accessible resource to process stress and take practical steps toward creating the life you want
Trauma and everyday challenges can cause us to disconnect and fall into survival mode. This comprehensive workbook gently leads us back to our authentic selves by helping us process difficult emotions and identify how ordinary and traumatic stress may have led to harmful patterns, including unhealthy relationships, people-pleasing, control issues, and self-sabotage.
Drawing on more than two decades of experience in clinical psychology and trauma recovery, Dr. Thema Bryant guides us through surveys and reflection questions to grow our self-awareness and understanding. She offers a diverse array of psychotherapeutic techniques based in both Western science and indigenous knowledge to help us shift our thoughts, heal our emotions, and actively take steps toward growth. Incorporating journal prompts, grounding exercises, spiritual practices like prayer and meditation, and embodied healing through dance and movement, Reclaim Yourself invites you to process your past, center your present, and transform your future. - How to Let Things Go: 99 Tips from a Zen Buddhist Monk to Relinquish Control and Free Yourself Up for What Matters
How to Let Things Go: 99 Tips from a Zen Buddhist Monk to Relinquish Control and Free Yourself Up for What Matters
by Shunmyo Masuno and Allison Markin Powell
$26.00Feeling overwhelmed? Step away from life's demands and free yourself up for what matters with this succinct and sensible guide by the Zen Buddhist author of the international bestsellers The Art of Simple Living and Don't Worry.
Amid the relentless cycle of news, social media, emails, and texts, it can be hard to know when, if ever, you can take a break from everything clamoring for your attention. The internationally bestselling Buddhist monk Shunmyo Masuno offers a radical message: You can leave it all be, and, indeed, sometimes the best thing you can learn is how to do nothing. How to Let Things Go will teach you to:
* Lesson #2: Give people space—being caring and being nosy are not the same thing.
* Lesson #15: Remember that social media is a tool and nothing more.
* Lesson #19: Let a relationship come to an end rather than force it.
* Lesson #40: Think of letting things go not as throwing them away but as setting them free.
* Lesson #75: Make decisions in the light of the morning—don't rush into them.
* Lesson #90: Slow down and take more breaks.With these and ninety-three other practical tips, you can abandon the futile pursuit of trying to control everything and discover the key to a fulfilling social life; individual well-being; and a calmer, more focused mind.
- Junie: A Novel
Junie: A Novel
by Erin Crosby Eckstine
$30.00A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms in this moving debut.
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.
When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.
With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind? - Master of Me: A Memoir
Master of Me: A Memoir
by Keke Palmer
$27.99From the award-winning, multi-hyphenate global entertainer Keke Palmer comes the inspiring true story of her journey to understanding her genuine value.
Right when it seemed like all the pieces were coming together and Keke was living her dream life, her world got derailed. She had put in the hard work, she had put in the sweat, her passion and heart had gotten her to where she had always wanted to be, yet she was faced with the hardest challenge yet and was forced to look inward to find an even greater depth and understanding of herself.
In her own raw and intimate words, Keke talks about everything including her struggles with boundaries, unconditional love, forgiveness, and worthiness. She walks us through how enduring the challenges that come our way leads to true performance, power, and purpose.
In this exhilarating, deeply poignant, and often laugh-out-loud book, Lauren Keyana Palmer gets real about life, career, and spiritualty. She talks about the tools she has developed to take the reins, harness her vulnerability, and recognize her ownership and mastery over her own life to turn her personal power into major power. With her unique blend of humor, empathy, and truth, Keke details her journey back to herself as she finds a new center within motherhood, career, and relationships.
They said, "Jack of all Trades, Master of None."
She said "No, I am the Master.”
“Of Me." - Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom
Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom
by Jasmine Marie
$30.00From breathwork practitioner and the founder of black girls breathing®, a practical path for Black women to heal trauma, combat chronic stress, and find freedom in their own bodies and minds.
It's no secret that Black women have been oppressed for centuries and, as a Black woman herself, Jasmine Marie knows the impact that intergenerational trauma and systemic racism have had—and continue to have—on her community. Those experiences are why she founded a breathwork company dedicated to helping Black women access somatic practices and understand the power of the mind‑body connection to undo the trauma the carry.
In Black Girls Breathing, Jasmine Marie shares the science-backed tools and wisdom of her program to help readers:
* Connect more fully to their bodies.
* Give themselves permission to rest.
* Heal the chronic stress they carry in their bodies and nervous systems.
* Address their emotional pain.
* Rebuild themselves and their communities.Ultimately, this book is a long-overdue resource for every Strong Black Woman: The woman ready to break cycles of trauma, heal the internalized beliefs of perfectionism and conditional self‑worth, and listen to the wisdom of her inner voice.
- What a Match (Lovestruck #2)
What a Match (Lovestruck #2)
by Mimi Grace
$14.99Meticulous and driven Gwen Gilmore knows what she wants... especially in a man. She is newly single and doesn't have time for lackluster chemistry or mixed signals. But the dating scene proves to be slow and unserious, and she realizes she may need some help.
Professional help.
A matchmaker, to be more specific.
Nothing will distract her from finding a man who checks all the boxes, except maybe her brother's grumpy best friend who's just moved into her home.
Anthony Woods has had a crush on his best friend's sister since the day he met her, and he's managed the unfortunate affliction by keeping his distance. However, when apartment problems have him temporarily sleeping on her couch, Gwen is suddenly closer than ever. And as much as he tries, his scowls and frowns can't stop the sparks from flying.
As they connect and get to know each other, Gwen can't help but notice when the perfect-on-paper boyfriend she has in mind starts to take an unexpected shape. Will she stick to the dating plan outlined by the professionals? Or admit when it comes to love, there's no right way to fall.
- Unlikely Neighbors: A Spicy Opposites Attract Romance
Unlikely Neighbors: A Spicy Opposites Attract Romance
Renee Daniel Flagler
Sold outA small-town woman’s journey of self-discovery takes an unexpected detour when she inherits a Brooklyn brownstone—complete with one hot next-door neighbor—in this sexy, emotional contemporary romance.
When you least expect it, love comes knocking…
Holland Davenport is ready to go beyond her small-town existence. Her plan involves moving into an apartment in Charleston—not inheriting a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn from a relative she never knew. Yet in a burst of daring, Holland meets the challenge head-on, moving to New York to learn more about her family and renovate the place. Add to that a gorgeous next-door neighbor who turns out to be a board member at her new job, and she’s definitely out of her depth.
Noble Washington is the successful CEO of a company he spent a decade building. But his carefully ordered life begins to unravel the second he meets fiery social worker Holland—and spends one unforgettable night with a woman who should be off-limits.
There’s a wall and a world of differences lying between them. But the sheltered Southerner and the ambitious native New Yorker feel a pull that just won’t be denied…
From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…
Frenemy Fix-Up by Yahrah St. John
Church Girl by Naima Simone
Out of Office by A.H. Cunningham
- Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
Eve L. Ewing
$32.00Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
“This book will transform the way you see this country.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.
In Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to “civilize” Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Education was not an afterthought for the Founding Fathers; it was envisioned by Thomas Jefferson as an institution that would fortify the country’s racial hierarchy. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. The most insidious aspects of this system fall below the radar in the forms of standardized testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources.
By demonstrating that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This book will change the way people understand the place we send our children for eight hours a day. - One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Omar El Akkad
$28.00From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values
On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.
This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.
- Needy Little Things
Needy Little Things
Channelle Desamours
$20.00In this debut speculative YA mystery, a Black teen with premonition-like powers must solve her friend's disappearance before she finds herself in the same danger, perfect for fans of Ace of Spades.
Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need―tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger―an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to let her become yet another forgotten Black girl.
Not trusting the police and media to do enough on their own, Sariyah and her friends work together to figure out what led to Deja’s disappearance. When Sariyah’s mother loses her job and her little brother faces complications with his sickle cell disease, managing her time, money, and emotions seems impossible. Desperate, Sariyah decides to hustle her need-sensing ability for cash―a choice that may not only lead her to Deja, but put her in the same danger Deja found herself in.
- Basquiat Colors Board Book
Basquiat Colors Board Book
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Sold outIntroducing Mudpuppy's new Board Book: ""Basquiat Colors"". Immerse your child in the dynamic world of colors through the iconic artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat in this engaging and educational board book. With the inclusion of translations in English, French, and Spanish for each color, this book offers a multicultural journey through language, inviting children to expand their horizons while learning about colors. From ""rouge"" to ""rojo"" to ""red,"" each translation fosters curiosity and appreciation for diversity.
PERFECT FOR GIFTING – Crafted from sturdy board pages, this book is designed to withstand the enthusiastic handling of little hands. The large, colorful illustrations and clear text make it perfect for early learners to engage independently or enjoy with a caregiver. Whether it's storytime at home, a multicultural learning experience in the classroom, or a gift for an art-loving child, "Basquiat Colors" is sure to inspire creativity, curiosity, and cultural appreciation.
EDUCATIONAL – The inclusion of translations in English, French, and Spanish introduces children to basic vocabulary in multiple languages, fostering early language skills. Introducing children to the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat also encourages appreciation for contemporary art and diverse artistic styles. Engaging with colorful illustrations and learning new words in different languages provides a multisensory learning experience, stimulating cognitive development.
FAMILY BONDING – The Basquiat Colors Board Book is a wonderful family bonding activity because it engages children and parents alike, promotes literacy and color appreciation, creates lasting memories, encourages creativity, and fosters a sense of togetherness and joy. Children associate the joy of reading with the warmth and comfort of spending time with their parents, strengthening the parent-child bond. Sharing the experience of reading will become a cherished family memory!MUDPUPPY - For over 25 years, Mudpuppy has created quality non-digital puzzles, games and toys for children and families that facilitate creative play and imaginative thinking. One of our core design principles is to engage kids and promote learning without the use of digital screens or technology. Mudpuppy is committed to designing and producing eco-friendly products that have a minimal carbon footprint. All Mudpuppy products adhere to CPSIA, ASTM, and CE Safety Regulations
- The Relationship Mechanic: A Black Sapphic Romantic Comedy (Peach Blossom, 2)
The Relationship Mechanic: A Black Sapphic Romantic Comedy (Peach Blossom, 2)
Karmen Lee
Sold outThere’s more than one way to love and more than one place to call home in this rousing small-town romantic comedy that’s sure to charm fans of Hannah Bonam-Young’s Next to You and Ashley Herring Blake’s Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date
There’s no fix for a lonely heart like a little TLC…
Jessica Jae-un Miller came to Peach Blossom, Georgia, for a visit, not a breakdown. But when her rental car dies on the outskirts of town, mechanic Lavenia “Vini” Williams provides a tow—and a very welcome jump start to Jessica’s heart. It’s been a minute since Jessica’s last fling—her relationship specialty—and Vini checks all the right boxes. If only the sexy car whisperer seemed interested…
Vini knows herself and what she wants. She loves her job, her family, her hometown—but she’d love to fall in love. Jessica stirs up all the right feelings, but the city girl has no intention of staying in Peach Blossom. Why sign up for a broken heart?
But the temptation is real as Vini goes out of her way to drive a carless Jessica around town. The pair can’t seem to keep their distance—or their hands to themselves. With only six weeks to figure out where their red-hot chemistry might lead, Vini and Jessica will have to decide if home can be where the heart is when the heart only knows how to run.
From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…
Peach Blossom
Book 1: The 7-10 Split
Book 2: The Relationship Mechanic
Book 3: The Secret Crush Book Club - BLACK PANTHER: A NATION UNDER OUR FEET [MARVEL PREMIER COLLECTION]
BLACK PANTHER: A NATION UNDER OUR FEET [MARVEL PREMIER COLLECTION]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
$14.99This Premier Collection contains a new foreword by rapper and activist Killer Mike and is presented in a newly designed book-format edition that also includes bonus content such as sketches, layouts, interviews, and variant covers!
National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) and acclaimed illustrator Brian Stelfreeze revolutionize the Black Panther mythos in this powerful graphic novel that blends high-tech futurism with the resonate themes of modern day.
The perfect entry point into the Marvel Universe anytime, anywhere.
As esteemed author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates brings his considerable talents to Marvel, will he usher in a new age of glory for Wakanda and its king, T’Challa, A.K.A. the Black Panther? Or will he enter the proud kingdom into its final days?
The high-tech African nation has been ravaged by outside forces, its queen has fallen and the people have turned against their king. As dissidents seek violent change, two of T’Challa’s own Dora Milaje forge their own brave path. And while outside forces pour fuel on the fire, the Black Panther recruits his own crew to aid in the struggle.
Meanwhile, on the spiritual plane, a journey of transformation begins. This is a story of a king who must find a new way to lead. Of a queen whose tale is not yet fully told. Of angels fighting for change and devils fomenting chaos. Of allies and enemies, friends and foes, love and hate. This is the story of Wakanda.
BONUS FEATURES
variant covers, 2022 Brian Stelfreeze introduction, Ta-Nehisi Coates/Ryan Coogler interview, Brian Stelfreeze interview, process/development materials, Brian Stelfreeze sketches, 2017 HC coverCOLLECTING: Black Panther (2016) 1-12
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