A modern classic from the Booker-shortlisted author of This Mournable Body

The groundbreaking first novel in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s award-winning trilogy, Nervous Conditions, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and has been “hailed as one of the 20th century’s most significant works of African literature” (The New York Times). Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. She yearns to be free of the constraints of her rural village and thinks she’s found her way out when her wealthy uncle offers to sponsor her schooling. But she soon learns that the education she receives at his mission school comes with a price.

A debut collection of stories set across the American South, featuring characters who struggle to find love and belonging in the wake of painful histories. How can you love where you come from, even when home doesn’t love you back?

In eleven stories that span Florida marshes, North Carolina mountains, and Southern metropolitan cities, Make Your Way Home follows Black men and women who grapple with the homes that have eluded them. A preteen pregnant alongside her mother refuses to let convention dictate who she names as the father of her child. Centuries after slavery separated his ancestors, a native Texan tries to win over the love of his life, despite the grip of a family curse. A young deaconess, who falls for a new church member, wonders what it means when God stops speaking to her. And at the very end of the South as we know it, two sisters seek to escape North to freedom, to promises of a more stable climate.

Artfully and precisely drawn, and steeped in place and history as it explores themes of belonging, inheritance, and deep intimacy, Carrie R. Moore’s debut collection announces an extraordinary new talent in American fiction, inviting us all to examine how the past shapes our present—and how our present choices will echo for years to come.

More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler’s mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century.

Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.

Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self-defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend’s Montgomery, Alabama, home as "an arsenal." Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent" civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to self-protection—yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, Charles E. Cobb Jr. recovers this history, describing the vital role that armed self-defense has played in the survival and liberation of black communities.  Drawing on his experiences in the civil rights movement and giving voice to its participants, Cobb lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the long history and importance of African Americans taking up arms to defend themselves against white supremacist violence.   

About the Author:

Charles E. Cobb Jr. is a former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and has taught at Brown University. An award-winning journalist, he is an inductee of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Cobb lives in Jacksonville, Florida.  

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and “MacArthur Genius” Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe—how to be in the world.

This book is about the creative process, but not on the page; its canvas is much larger. Author Lynell George not only engages the world that shaped Octavia E. Butler, she also explores the very specific processes through which Butler shaped herself—her unique process of self-making. It’s about creating a life with what little you have—hand-me-down books, repurposed diaries, journals, stealing time to write in the middle of the night, making a small check stretch—bit by bit by bit.

Highly visual and packed with photographs of Butler’s ephemera, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky draws the reader into Butler’s world, creating a sense of unmatched intimacy with the deeply private writer.

In Music Is History, bestselling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove harnesses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and his deep curiosity about history to examine America over the past fifty years. Choosing one essential track from each year, Questlove unpacks each song’s significance, revealing the pivotal role that American music plays around issues of race, gender, politics, and identity.

This richly illustrated and vastly inclusive collection uplifts the works of authors who are often underrepresented in the literary world. Using their keen knowledge and deep love for all things literary, coauthors Jamise Harper (founder of the Diverse Spines book community) and Jane Mount (author of Bibliophile) collaborated to create an essential volume filled with treasures for every reader:

• Dozens of themed illustrated book stacks—like Classics, Contemporary Fiction, Mysteries, Cookbooks, and more—all with an emphasis on authors of color and authors from diverse cultural backgrounds
• A look inside beloved bookstores owned by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
• Reading recommendations from leading BIPOC literary influencers

Diversify your reading list to expand your world and shift your perspective. Kickstart your next literary adventure now!

A body-positive guide to help girls ages 8 to 12 navigate the changes of puberty

Puberty can be a difficult time for a young girl―and it’s natural not to know who (or what) to ask. Celebrate Your Body is a reassuring entry into puberty books for girls that encourages girls to face puberty with excitement and empowerment. From period care to mysterious hair in new places, this age-appropriate sex education book has the answers you’re looking for―in a way you can relate to.

Covering everything from bras to braces, this body-positive top choice in books about puberty for girls offers friendly guidance and support when you need it most. In addition to tips on managing intense feelings, making friends, and more, you’ll get advice on what to eat and how to exercise so your body is healthy, happy, and ready for the changes ahead.

• Puberty explained―Discover what happens, when it happens, and why your body (and mind) is amazing in every way.
• Social skills―Learn how to stand up to peer pressure, stay safe on social media, and keep the right kind of friends.
• Self-care tips―Choose the right foods, exercises, and sleep schedule to keep your changing body at its best with advice you won’t find in other puberty books for girls.

This inclusive option in puberty books for girls is the ultimate guide to facing puberty with confidence.

A comprehensive and judgement-free pregnancy companion: Nurture is the only all-in-one pregnancy and birthing book for modern mothers-to-be and their partners who want a more integrative approach. Author Erica Chidi Cohen has assisted countless births and helped hundreds of families ease into their new roles through her work as a doula. 

Nurture covers everything from the beginning months of pregnancy to the baby's first weeks.

This empowering book includes:
• Supportive self-care and mindfulness exercises, trimester-specific holistic remedies, nourishing foods and recipes for every month of pregnancy, and expert tips for every birth environment.
• More than 40 charming and helpful illustrations, charts, and lists can be found throughout.
• Dozens of important topics that every modern mom needs to know including fetal development, making choices for a hospital, home or birth center birth, the basics of breastfeeding, tips on what to expect postpartum, and more.

Nurture is an all-inclusive pregnancy and birthing guide book that gives soon-to-be mothers and their partners the information they need to make decisions, feel confident, and enjoy the beauty of creating new life.

The first definitive collection of Igbo legends and traditions for kids, this book explores the mythological origins of the Igbo people, the ancient Nri Kingdom, and Igbo cosmology before delving into the Alusi, or the core Igbo deities. Following this introduction to the pantheon of gods and goddesses, a collection of the most popular Igbo myths, folktales, and legends will immerse kids in exciting stories of tricksters, shapeshifters, and heroes, including:

• The Wrestler Whose Back Never Touched the Ground
• Ojiugo, the Rare Gem
• The Tortoise and the Birds, or The Origin Story of Sea Turtles
• Ngwele Aghuli, Why the Crocodile Lives Alone
• How Death Came to Be
• And more!

Chinelo Anyadiegwu is a writer and graduate student. When they aren't writing stories about fantasy realms or mythology, they are writing grants. In their free time, they play video games of all sorts, from Tabletops and MMOs to Sandbox RPGs.

A groundbreaking collection about Afropioneerism past and present from Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and New York Times bestselling author Rio Cortez

From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience, comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as "Afropioneers" in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures. 
 
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors—some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction—Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom. 

A soulful collection of illuminating essays and interviews that explore Black people’s spiritual connection to the land and the climate justice crisis, curated by the acclaimed author of Farming While Black.

Author of Farming While Black and co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, Leah Penniman reminds us that ecological humility is an intrinsic part of Black cultural heritage. While racial capitalism has attempted to sever our connection to the sacred earth for 400 years, Black people have long seen the land and water as family and treating the Earth as a home essential.

This thought-provoking anthology brings together today’s most respected and influential Black environmentalist voices. These varied and distinguished experts include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Alice Walker; the first Queen Mother and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, Queen Quet; marine biologist, policy expert, and founder and president of Ocean Collectiv, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson; and the Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers, Land Loss Prevention Project, Savi Horne. These leaders address the essential connection between nature and our survival and how runaway consumption and corporate insatiability are harming the earth and every facet of American society, including racial violence, food apartheid, and climate justice.

Those whose skin is the color of soil are reviving their ancestral and ancient practice of listening to the earth for guidance. Penniman makes clear that the fight for racial and environmental justice demands that Black people put our planet first and defer to nature as our teacher.

An exquisite combination of beautiful photography and compelling stories, this book from Outdoor Afro founder, Rue Mapp, celebrates Black joy in nature.

Filled with breathtaking photography, inspiring stories, profiles, and spotlights from Outdoor Afro group members, prominent Black leaders in outdoor spaces, and other organizations, this book inspires Black communities to reclaim their place in the natural world. Interspersed throughout are essays from Mapp on the rich history of Black involvement in the outdoors, activism, and conservation, as well as resources for readers who want to deepen their own connection with the elements. A perfect blend of gorgeous photographs, awe-inspiring stories, and Black history, this collection is the perfect gift for anyone looking to heal in these sacred natural spaces.

INCREDIBLE ORGANIZATION: Outdoor Afro is a leading organization in the promotion of Black involvement and interaction with the outdoors. Their powerful work is leaving positive, lasting effects on the Black community and broader conservation community.

ACCOMPLISHED AUTHOR: Rue Mapp's rich involvement in the outdoors and her connections with like-minded individuals and organizations offer a unique approach to educating, motivating, and encouraging Black connection with nature.

INSPIRATIONAL AND UNIQUE: This book showcases Black joy and strength in spaces from which they have either historically been excluded, or less represented, and makes for an inventive and uplifting celebration of Black joy in nature.

A GREAT GIFT: Perfect for the outdoorsy person in your life, this book will make for an excellent boost of inspiration and encouragement all year round.

Paletero Man meets Fry Bread in this vibrant and cheerful ode to platanos, the star of Dominican cuisine, written by award-winning poet Lissette Norman and illustrated by Sara Palacios.

Platanos are Yesenia’s favorite food. They can be sweet and sugary, or salty and savory. And they’re a part of almost every meal her Dominican family makes. 

Stop by her apartment and find out why platanos go with everything—especially love!

___

Los plátanos son la comida favorita de Yesenia. Pueden ser dulces y azucarados o salados y sabrosos. Y son parte de casi todas las comidas que prepara su familia dominicana.

Pasa por su apartamento y descubre por qué los plátanos van con todo, ¡especialmente con el amor!

The first title in an exciting new Level 2 I Can Read! series from acclaimed author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and illustrator Lydia Mba, starring Makeda, an exuberant seven-year-old "maker" and problem solver who loves to create.

It’s Makeda’s birthday! To celebrate, she is excited to make her marvelous coconut drops to share with the class. But everyone else brings cupcakes for their birthdays. Will her classmates like her special treat?

Reissued for the first time in over thirty years, Black New Orleans explores the twenty-year period in which the city's black population more than doubled. Meticulously researched and replete with archival illustrations from newspapers and rare periodicals, John W. Blassingame's groundbreaking history offers a unique look at the economic and social life of black people in New Orleans during Reconstruction. Not a conventional political treatment, Blassingame's history instead emphasizes the educational, religious, cultural, and economic activities of African Americans during the late nineteenth century.

"Blending historical and sociological perspectives, and drawing with skill and imagination upon a variety of sources, [Blassingame] offers fresh insights into an oft-studied period of Southern history. . . . In both time and place the author has chosen an extraordinarily revealing vantage point from which to view his subject. "-Neil R. McMillen, American Historical Review

Experience the vibrant cuisines of West Africa any night of the week with 80 easy, accessible recipes

This is West African food for every kitchen, a generous, warm welcome to its delicious, irresistible culinary mainstays and rhythms. If you already cook with ingredients like hearty greens, yams, black-eyed peas, and okra, or have enjoyed Southern staples like jambalaya and gumbo, you have tasted the deep culinary influences of this interconnected region that spans Senegal, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria, and more. 

Now, in Simply West African, celebrated chef and West African cooking authority Pierre Thiam unlocks the region’s essential tastes for the everyday home cook. With helpful tips and tricks that teach readers the basics of the cuisine, Pierre shows how seamlessly these flavorful, easy-to-execute dishes can become weeknight staples or the star of your table for weekend gatherings. Introduce family and friends to:

• Familiar dishes with a distinctly West African vibe: Chicken Yassa Tacos; Saucy Shrimp and Fonio Grits; Maman's Crispy Herb-Crusted Chicken; Blackened Salmon with Moyo Sauce

• One-pot crowd pleasers: Root Vegetable Mafe; Chicken Stew with Eggplant; Tomato, and Ginger; Braised Beef and Collard Greens

• Hearty vegetables and starchy soak-em-ups: Roasted Eggplant in Peanut Sauce; Double Coconut Rice and Peas; Smoky Black-Eyed Pea Mash

“Legacy is an illuminating and stirring journey of a book.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

First published in 1974 and even more relevant today, a natural and whole foods guide the voice of black consciousness, cultural icon Dick Gregory, the incomparable satirist, human rights and environmental activist, health advocate, social justice champion, and author of the NAACP Image Award–winning Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies and the classic bestseller Nigger: An Autobiography.

Written with Dick Gregory’s irreverent wit and informed by his deep intelligence, Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat is for real people who are concerned about their health and wellness. Gregory offers an enlightening introduction to natural foods, and offers a wickedly amusing and informative assessment of how our modern diet damages the human digestive tract, and raises our consciousness about the political power of food.

Gregory argues that how you treat yourself and your body reflects how you treat others. He discusses various fasts and the ones he’s done for both political and health reasons, hunger in America, navy beans, and how Americans are changing the way they eat—the beginning of a movement in the 1970s that is still felt today. He offers suggestions on diets to help you gain or lose pounds and offers advice on natural substitutes for favorite alcoholic drinks. You are what you eat—with Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat you can laugh your way to better health. 

Undoubtedly the most influential black intellectual of the twentieth century and one of America's finest historians, W.E.B. DuBois knew that the liberation of the African American people required liberal education and not vocational training. He saw education as a process of teaching certain timeless values: moderation, an avoidance of luxury, a concern for courtesy, a capacity to endure, a nurturing love for beauty. At the same time, DuBois saw education as fundamentally subversive. This was as much a function of the well-established role of educationfrom Plato forwardas the realities of the social order under which he lived. He insistently calls for great energy and initiative; for African Americans controlling their own lives and for continued experimentation and innovation, while keeping education's fundamentally radical nature in view.

Though containing speeches written nearly one-hundred years ago, and on a subject that has seen more stormy debate and demagoguery than almost any other in recent history, The Education of Black People approaches education with a timelessness and timeliness, at once rooted in classical thought that reflects a remarkably fresh and contemporary relevance.

From its humble origins at house parties in the Bronx, where DJs mixed old records to create new sounds, charismatic MCs let their clever lyrics flow, and B-boys and B-girls pioneered inventive dance moves, hip-hop quickly became a musical and cultural revolution.

In this volume of History Comics, we follow Aaliyah, a hip-hop superfan who is about to get a lesson in all things “old school” courtesy of her dad. The pair take a day trip to the Bronx, where Aaliyah discovers the many unsung
heroes who helped create the foundations of hip-hop. So get ready to drop the beat, bust a move, and get down with some fresh rap knowledge!

From the New York Times bestselling author of Drama Free and Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a hands-on resource for understanding and working through dysfunctional family dynamics—and recognizing when to walk away Family can be a source of connection, and a source of conflict. In this exercise-filled workbook, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers powerful insights along with thought-provoking questions to help you unpack what’s really going on—and express your needs and expectations going forward. Whether you are coping with a long-term pattern of emotional neglect, addiction, or abuse, or trying to understand a new conflict that’s come up with a parent, sibling, or in-law, you will find empowering information and tools to help you manage these complex relationships in a way that offers psychological safety and honors the person you truly are.

Featuring A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill, & Cotton Comes To Harlem

A one-volume selection of four novels in a legendary detective series—blistering, groundbreaking capers set in Harlem's criminal underworld—by master crime writer Chester Himes A friend and contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin—and every bit their equal—Chester Himes is the acclaimed author of literary novels, stories, and essays, as well as the classic crime fiction series for which he is best known, featuring detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. Himes authored nine novels in the Harlem Detectives series, and in these four popular, accomplished installments, his cold, wisecracking sleuths are thrown into a brutal, murderous world, full of conniving con men, gun-toting gangsters, and opium-smoking preachers. Himes's vision of Harlem's criminal underground is both riotous entertainment, enriched by his deftly plotted mysteries and scintillating dialogue, and a penetrating look into the fraught tensions of race in postwar America. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

“These feel like images you might have dreamed, both of the kind that slip away and the ones you manage to keep tenuously in your grasp, slippery, otherworldly. . . . Before our eyes, Zanele Muholi transforms into a mother, a domestic worker, an Afrofuturist, an oracle. It’s fiction and it is not.”―Yrsa Daley-Ward, The New York Times Book Review

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is the long-awaited monograph from one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. The book features over ninety of Muholi’s evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi’s radical statements of identity, race, and resistance are a direct response to contemporary and historical racisms. As Muholi states, “I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces―brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves―to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.”

With more than twenty written contributions from curators, poets, and authors, alongside luxurious tritone reproductions of Muholi’s images, Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement.