All Books
- A Date for the Mayor: A Drayton City Novella (LeFleur Mafia)
A Date for the Mayor: A Drayton City Novella (LeFleur Mafia)
Aubree Pynn
Sold outHe didn’t need a date - he needed her. She wasn’t planning to stay long - but she got caught in his web... again. Universes clash again and what was lost is quickly found.
- The New Book: A Powerful Collection from Nikki Giovanni, America's Celebrated Poet and Indispensable Radical Orator
The New Book: A Powerful Collection from Nikki Giovanni, America's Celebrated Poet and Indispensable Radical Orator
Nikki Giovanni
$26.00Nikki Giovanni’s extraordinary final collection—a landmark of American literature—speaks to the fury of our current political moment while reflecting on the tragedies and triumphs of her early life.
For decades, Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has been at the forefront of American culture. The New Book is a towering work of protest against the divisions of our time, leavened with moments of joy and reflection about her indelible legacy, her family history, and the small pleasures of her richly lived life.
In The New Book, Nikki Giovanni slashes at the ridiculousness of our cultural and political climate: “We have no secrets/since the world shrunk/and the icebergs melted/and all the year books/are digitized./… and we press Like/or No Like/as if it mattered.”
She remembers 2020 and its cataclysmic reckoning with police brutality and white supremacy: “I do understand that republicans/Are cowards and so are those nazis/Cheering/And those kkk we now call police killing/Not to mention father and sons chasing unarmed Black men/and running their cars into crowds/Pretending they are brave or something/They are not only cowards/And nazis but evil fools/And who go to bed white/Wake up American/And hate themselves for having/To share this earth/They will not overcome/And we will not love them.”
But also in the same poem: “But what does 2020 mean to me/A chance to learn to open oysters/Talk to my friends/Catch up on my reading/Tell myself I am going to dust the house/Lie about it/...Enjoy my own company not to mention football/And remember there will be tomorrow/Because there will be/And evil will go and good will come/I am Black/We have seen much worse.”
With this collection, which includes brief letters and short prose from her life as well as poetry, Giovanni reaffirms her place as a giant of literature, a canny truth-teller, an indispensable radical orator, and one of America’s preeminent cultural critics. It is a book to be savored, and shared.
"If there was a need for poetry that galvanized and inspired, there was also a demand for poetry that comforted and unified — and Ms. Giovanni provided on both counts." — The Washington Post
- Shirley Chisholm Inspirational Card
Shirley Chisholm Inspirational Card
$6.00The lively design complements the uplifting message inside. See images for inside message. Card Details: Dimensions - (A7) 5" x 7" Printed on thick, premium quality cover stock, paired with matching envelope. Card comes in a protective sleeve. - How to Dream (Mindfulness Essentials)
How to Dream (Mindfulness Essentials)
Thich Nhat Hanh
$10.95In the final book of the best-selling Mindfulness Essentials series, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to realize our dreams in this very moment.
We all want our lives to be useful and meaningful. The aspiration to transform suffering—our own, each other’s, and the Earth’s—can give us the energy we need to continue on a wholesome path. In How to Dream, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how to let our deep desire nourish us and, in turn, how to keep that desire alive.
With inspiring illustrations throughout, this pocket-sized book explains how to:
• Get in touch with our deepest dream
• Live our dream in every moment of daily life
• Keep our dream alive with the help of a community
• Protect our dream from the dampening effects of our fast-paced modern life
• Direct energy towards lasting personal, social, and political changeIf our aspiration is lost, depleted, or if we’ve slowly let it go, we must rekindle it. Whatever our role in society—activist, businessperson, teacher, parent, or politician—we can live into our deep aspiration and change the direction of civilization. And together, as a community with a collective aspiration, we have the energy to realize our dream.
- PRE-ORDER: I, Medusa: A Novel
PRE-ORDER: I, Medusa: A Novel
Ayana Gray
$30.00PRE-ORDER. WILL SHIP ON Novemebr 18, 2025
From New York Times bestselling author Ayana Gray comes a new kind of villain origin story, reimagining one of the most iconic monsters in Greek mythology as a provocative and powerful young heroine.
The first edition hardcover will feature stunning sprayed edges, a premium dust jacket with foil, and a gorgeous custom-stamped case—while supplies last!
Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents—both gods, albeit minor ones—she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home.
In the colorful market streets of Athens and the clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favored acolyte, getting her first tastes of purpose and power. But when she is noticed by another Olympian, Poseidon, the course of Meddy’s promising future is suddenly and irrevocably altered.
When her locs are transformed into snakes as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Medusa must embrace a new identity—not as a victim, but as a vigilante—and with it, the chance to write her own story as mortal, martyr, and myth.
Exploding with rage, heartbreak, and love, I, Medusa portrays a young woman caught in the crosscurrents between her heart’s deepest desires and the cruel, careless games the Olympian gods play.
- BLACK THOUGHTS: A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS
BLACK THOUGHTS: A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS
Mr. Tomonoshi!
Sold outBLACK THOUGHTS: A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS is an uncompromising exploration of Black American Futurism, resistance, innovation, and the elevation of Black thought.
This book does not seek permission—it reclaims the narrative, dismantles historical distortions, and reimagines the Black future on its own terms.
Through a series of bold and thought-provoking essays, MR. TOMONOSHi! confronts systemic erasure, economic exclusion, and the persistent framing of Black genius within whiteness.
From the mislabeling of Black innovators as secondary to their white counterparts, to the financial structures that keep Black businesses in perpetual development, this book exposes how systems work against Black success while affirming that Black futurism is the blueprint for radical transformation.
This work does not simply reflect on history—it challenges perspectives, reshapes narratives, and demands new action. It examines the relationship between Black ingenuity and survival, Black ownership and liberation, Black consumerism and economic power, all while rejecting the constraints imposed by whiteness as the
- Cane
Cane
Jean Toomer
$15.00Jean Toomer’s Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style.
First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane’s lack of a wider readership was because it didn’t reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature.
For the first time in Penguin Classics, this edition of Cane features a new introduction, suggestions for further reading, and notes by scholar George Hutchinson, and National Book Award Foundation 5 Under 35 novelist Zinzi Clemmons contributes a foreword. - Shante Keys and the New Year's Peas by Gail Piernas-Davenport
Shante Keys and the New Year's Peas by Gail Piernas-Davenport
Sold outShanté Keys loves New Year's Day! But while Grandma fixed chitlins, baked ham, greens, and cornbread, she forgot the black-eyed peas! Oh no--it'll be bad luck without them! So Shanté sets out to borrow some from the neighbors.
Shanté Keys loves New Year's Day! But while Grandma fixed chitlins, baked ham, greens, and cornbread, she forgot the black-eyed peas! Oh no—it'll be bad luck without them! So Shanté sets out to borrow some from the neighbors.
- The Negro in the Making of America by Benjamin Quarles
The Negro in the Making of America by Benjamin Quarles
$24.99The bestselling, definitive study of African Americans throughout American history, now with a new introduction by noted scholar V. P. Franklin.
In The Negro in the Making of America, eminent historian Benjamin Quarles provides one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts ever gathered in one volume of the role that African Americans have played in shaping the destiny of America. Starting with the arrival of the slave ships in the early 1600s and moving through the Colonial period, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and into the last half of the twentieth century, Quarles chronicles the sweep of events that have brought blacks and their struggle for social and economic equality to the forefront of American life.
Through compelling portraits of central political, historical, and artistic figures such as Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Quarles illuminates the African American contributions that have enriched the cultural heritage of America. This classic history also covers black participation in politics, the rise of a black business class, and the forms of discrimination experienced by blacks in housing, employment, and the media.
Quarles's groundbreaking work not only surveys the role of black Americans as they engaged in the dual, simultaneous processes of assimilating into and transforming the culture of their country, but also, in a portrait of the white response to blacks, holds a mirror up to the deeper moral complexion of our nation's history. The restoration of this history holds a redemptive quality—one that can be used, in the author's words, as a "vehicle for present enlightenment, guidance, and enrichment." - African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History
African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History
by Tracey Baptiste
$19.95Heroic full-color portraits illustrate the stories of ten people who helped shape the African continent from ancient times through the tumultuous sixteenth century. In a richly designed work including profiles of rulers, educators, inventors, scholars, and explorers with additional maps and graphics, an award-winning author introduces reader to underrepresented stories of Black history. - Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk
Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk
by Delores S. Williams
$26.00This landmark work first published 20 years ago helped establish the field of African-American womanist theology. It is widely regarded as a classic text in the field. Drawing on the biblical figure of Hagar mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God Williams finds a proptype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar s story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today. Exploring the themes implicit in Hagar s story poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounter with God Williams traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present day. A new womanist theology emerges from this shared experience, from the interplay of oppressions on account of race, sex and class. Sisters in the Wilderness offers a telling critique of theologies that promote liberation but ignore women of color. This is a book that defined a new theological project and charted a path that others continue to explore. - We Want for Our Sisters What We Want for Ourselves: African American Women Who Practice Polygyny/Polygamy by Consent (2ND ed.) by Patricia Dixon
We Want for Our Sisters What We Want for Ourselves: African American Women Who Practice Polygyny/Polygamy by Consent (2ND ed.) by Patricia Dixon
$12.95In We Want for Our Sisters What We Want for Ourselves, Dr. Patricia Dixon (aka Ra Heter) debunks myths about monogamy and polygyny and challenges us to rethink our approach to marriage and family. This book reveals that before European domination, polygyny was an accepted marriage and family practice in over eighty percent of the world's cultures. Even in Western societies, polygyny has always been practiced. However, because it is done under a myth of monogamy, this creates a "peculiar" form of the practice. This peculiar form of polygyny was practiced in early European history in Greece and Rome. It was also practiced during slavery in the U.S. to the detriment of African American women and their families. Even in contemporary America, because closed polygyny is practiced in various forms, under the guise of monogamy, it continues to disempower African American women and undermine their marriages and families.
Dr. Dixon offers many reasons to support polygyny, most importantly, the shortage of available African American men. Through extensive interviews, she offers an insider's look at polygynous marriages, showing readers its benefits and disadvantages, interpersonal dynamics, how financial, sexual, and parental responsibilities are determined, and the legal, moral and cultural challenges that must be overcome in order to make polygynous marriages possible within American society. Finally, she calls for African American women to move toward building marriages based on love, truth, community, and ultimately a womanist ethic of care for sisters.
- I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography Of Nina Simone
I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography Of Nina Simone
Nina Simone
$15.99The mesmerizing autobiography of one of the most revered soul, jazz, and blues divas of our time-the late Nina Simone
James Baldwin used to tell Nina Simone, "This is the world you have made for yourself, now you have to live in it." Simone has created for herself a world of magnificent peaks. Often compared to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, Simone is known as one of the greatest singers of her generation. She has recorded forty-three albums, ranging from blues to jazz to folk, and her hits like "I Loves You, Porgy," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," "I Put a Spell on You," and "Mississippi Goddam" have confirmed her as an enduring force in popular music. Her song "Young, Gifted, and Black" became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement and thrust her beyond international stardom into the center of activism. But such worlds as Simone's are not without their grim valleys: disastrous marriages, arrest and the threat of imprisonment, mental breakdown, poverty, and attempted suicide. She has survived these trials and continues to perform throughout Europe and the United States. With undiminished passion and in her unconquerable voice, this is Nina Simone's powerful memoir of her tempestuous life. - We Lie Here: A Thriller by Rachel Howzell Hall
We Lie Here: A Thriller by Rachel Howzell Hall
Sold outA woman’s trip home reveals frightening truths in a twisty novel of murder and family secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Gone and These Toxic Things.
TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life.
The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years—drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.”
But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?
The deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life—or end it.
- A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography
A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography
by Mireille Miller-Young
Sold outBased on extensive archival and ethnographic research on dozens of women who have worked in adult entertainment since the 1980s, A Taste for Brown Sugar boldly takes on representations of black women’s sexuality in the porn industry.
A Taste for Brown Sugar boldly takes on representations of black women's sexuality in the porn industry. It is based on Mireille Miller-Young's extensive archival research and her interviews with dozens of women who have worked in the adult entertainment industry since the 1980s. The women share their thoughts about desire and eroticism, black women's sexuality and representation, and ambition and the need to make ends meet. Miller-Young documents their interventions into the complicated history of black women's sexuality, looking at individual choices, however small—a costume, a gesture, an improvised line—as small acts of resistance, of what she calls "illicit eroticism." Building on the work of other black feminist theorists, and contributing to the field of sex work studies, she seeks to expand discussion of black women's sexuality to include their eroticism and desires, as well as their participation and representation in the adult entertainment industry. Miller-Young wants the voices of black women sex workers heard, and the decisions they make, albeit often within material and industrial constraints, recognized as their own. - New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair
New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair
by Jasmine Nichole Cobb
Sold outThrough close readings of slave narratives, scrapbooks, travel illustration, documentary film and photography, as well as collage, craft, and sculpture, Jasmine Nichole Cobb explores Black hair as a visual material through which to reimagine the sensual experience of Blackness.
From Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis, “natural hair” has been associated with the Black freedom struggle. In New Growth Jasmine Nichole Cobb traces the history of Afro-textured coiffure, exploring it as a visual material through which to reimagine the sensual experience of Blackness. Through close readings of slave narratives, scrapbooks, travel illustration, documentary film and photography, as well as collage, craft, and sculpture, from the nineteenth century to the present, Cobb shows how the racial distinctions ascribed to people of African descent become simultaneously visible and tactile. Whether examining Soul Train’s and Ebony’s promotion of the Afro hairstyle alongside cosmetics or how artists such as Alison Saar and Lorna Simpson underscore the construction of Blackness through the representation of hair, Cobb foregrounds the inseparability of Black hair’s look and feel. Demonstrating that Blackness is palpable through appearance and feeling, Cobb reveals the various ways that people of African descent forge new relationships to the body, public space, and visual culture through the embrace of Black hair. - Lorna Simpson Collages
Lorna Simpson Collages
Sold out"Black women's heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves, solar systems, moonscapes, volcanic interiors."
—Elizabeth Alexander, from the Introduction
Using advertising photographs of black women (and men) drawn from vintage issues of Ebony and Jet magazines, the exquisite and thought-provoking collages of world-renowned artist Lorna Simpson explore the richly nuanced language of hair. Surreal coiffures made from colorful ink washes, striking geological formations from old textbooks, and other unexpected forms and objects adorn the models to mesmerizingly beautiful effect.
Featuring 160 artworks, an artist's statement, and an introduction by poet, author, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander, this volume celebrates the irresistible power of Simpson's visual vernacular. - City Without Altar
City Without Altar
by Jasminne Mendez
$18.00CITY WITHOUT ALTAR is a poetry collection and play in verse that explores what it means to live, love, heal and experience violence as a Black person in the world. The titular play in verse that sits at the center of the book seeks to amplify the voices and experiences of victims, survivors and living ancestors of the 1937 Haitian Massacre that occurred along the northwest Dominican/Haitian border during the Trujillo Era. Between the scenes of the play are interludes that explore a different kind of cutting and what it means to feel othered because of illness, disability and blackness. Ultimately, Machete is a meditation on being/feeling blacked out by the archive, on the world stage and in one's daily life. - Loving in the War Years: And Other Writings, 1978-1998
Loving in the War Years: And Other Writings, 1978-1998
by Cherríe Moraga
$18.95An updated edition combining two classic works of Chicana and queer literatures, with a new introduction by renowned writer and luminary, Cherríe Moraga.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, this updated edition of Loving in the War Years combines Moraga’s classic memoir with The Last Generation: Poetry and Prose, originally published in 1993, along with additional writings from the late 1990s, The result is a synergy of signature works crucial to the development of the intersectional politics we know today.
Cherríe Moraga’s powerful memoir remains as urgent as ever. She explores the contradictions and complexities of her Chicana and lesbian identities, moving gracefully between poetry and prose, Spanish and English, personal narratives and political theory. Moraga recounts navigating the world largely as an outsider in her early years, circling the interconnected societies around her from a distant yet observant perspective. Ultimately, however, her writing serves as a bridge between her cultures, languages, family, and herself, enabling her to look inward to forge connections from what had heretofore been inaccessible parts of her interior world. A touchstone for artists and activists, the works combine to show how deep self-awareness and compassionate engagement with one’s radically changing surroundings are key to building global solidarity among people and political movements.
- We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love
$16.00Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.
Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.
To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice. - The Wealth Decision: 10 Simple Steps to Achieve Financial Freedom and Build Generational Wealth by Dominique Broadway
The Wealth Decision: 10 Simple Steps to Achieve Financial Freedom and Build Generational Wealth by Dominique Broadway
Sold outAn eye-opening roadmap for becoming a millionaire and building the foundation of generational wealth from a self-made, first-generation multimillionaire.
Demystify the path to wealth once and for all with Dominique Broadway’s unique strategy for taking control of your finances and becoming a millionaire. Based on simple steps and small decisions that build upon each other that anyone can execute (even those who have never had money or who face debt), The Wealth Decision includes:
-What orange juice has to do with building wealth (hint: it’s about wanting the good stuff)
-Strategies for spending your way to wealth
-One single question to determine if you’re on top of your money
-How to avoid saving your way to debt
-A road map to score higher on your credit score
-Dominique’s framework for picking the best investments for you
-What insurance has to do with your legacy
Written with millennials and Gen Zers in mind, The Wealth Decision first shows you how to make that one decision to be wealthy. It then takes you through the most important decisions you need to live a life of financial freedom and ensuing strategies to build generational wealth and become a millionaire. Worksheets, resources, visuals, quizzes, and graphs bring Dominique’s strategies to life. With information on everything from crypto to day-trading to modern financial trends, The Wealth Decision is a must-have for anyone looking to up-level their financial situation. - Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660
Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660
by John K. Thornton & Linda M. Heywood
Sold outThis book shows that the first generation of Africans taken to English and Dutch colonies before 1660 were captured by pirates from these countries from slave ships coming from Kongo and Angola. This region had embraced Christianity and elements of Western culture, such as names and some material culture, the result of a long period of diplomatic, political, and military interaction with the Portuguese. This background gave them an important role in shaping the way slavery, racism, and African-American culture would develop in English and Dutch colonies throughout the Western Hemisphere.
- Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy
Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy
by Clarence Lusane
Sold outTwenty Dollars and Change places Harriet Tubman’s life and legacy in a long tradition of resistance, illuminating the ongoing struggle to realize a democracy in which her emancipatory vision prevails.
America is in the throes of a historic reckoning with racism, with the battle for control over official narratives at ground zero. Across the country, politicians, city councils, and school boards are engaged in a highly polarized debate about whose accomplishments should be recognized, and whose point of view should be included in the telling of America’s history.
In Twenty Dollars and Change, political scientist Clarence Lusane, author of the acclaimed The Black History of the White House, writes from a basic premise: Racist historical narratives and pervasive social inequities are inextricably linked—changing one can transform the other. Taking up the debate over the future of the twenty-dollar bill, Lusane uses the question of Harriet Tubman vs. Andrew Jackson as a lens through which to view the current state of our nation's ongoing reckoning with the legacies of slavery and foundational white supremacy. He places the struggle to confront unjust social conditions in direct connection with the push to transform our public symbols, making it plain that any choice of whose life deserves to be remembered and honored is a direct reflection of whose basic rights are deemed worthy of protection, and whose are not.
- You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight
You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight
by Kalynn Bayron
$11.99At Camp Mirror Lake, terror is the name of the game . . . but can you survive the night?
This heart-pounding slasher by New York Times bestselling author Kalynn Bayron is perfect for fans of Fear Street.
Charity has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, The Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business.
But the last weekend of the season, Charity’s co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity’s role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they’ll need figure out what this killer is after. As they unravel the bloody history of the real Mirror Lake, Charity discovers that there may be more to the story than she ever suspected . . . - Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900–1930
Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900–1930
by Timothy E. Nelson
$26.95Blackdom, New Mexico, was a township that lasted aboutthirty years. In this book, Timothy E. Nelson situates the township’s storywhere it belongs: along the continuum of settlement in Mexico’s Northern Frontier.Dr. Nelson illuminates the set of conscious efforts that helped Black pioneersdevelop Blackdom Township into a frontier boomtown.
“Blackdom” started as an inherited idea of a nineteenth-centuryAfrotopia. The idea of creating a Blackdom was refined within Blackinstitutions as part of the perpetual movement of Black Colonization. In 1903,thirteen Black men, encouraged by the 1896 Plessy decision, formed the BlackdomTownsite Company and set out to make Blackdom a real place in New Mexico, wherethey were outside the reach of Jim Crow laws.
Many believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However,new evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth continued toexist throughout the twentieth century in other forms. During Blackdom’s boomtimes,in December 1919, Blackdom Oil Company shifted town business from aregenerative agricultural community to a more extractive model. Nelson hasuncovered new primary source materials that suggest for Blackdom a newlydiscovered third decade. This story has never been fully told or contextualizeduntil now.
Reoriented to Mexico’s “northern frontier,” oneobserves Black ministers, Black military personnel, and Black freemasons whocolonized as part of the transmogrification of Indigenous spaces into theAmerican West. Nelson’s concept of the Afro-Frontier evokes a “Turnerian West,”but it is also fruitfully understood as a Weberian “Borderland.” Its history highlightsa brief period and space that nurtured Black cowboy culture. While Blackdom’scivic presence was not lengthy, its significance—and that of the Afro-Frontier—isan important window in the history of Afrotopias, Black Consciousness, and thenotion of an American West. - My Brother Is an Avocado
My Brother Is an Avocado
by Tracy Darnton
$18.99A big sister anticipates the birth of a new sibling in this warm and funny stage-by-stage picture book tour of all the sizes of a growing baby, from teeny-tiny poppy seed to giant watermelon.
It’s hard to wait for an exciting new baby to join the family, especially when it’s still growing inside Mom’s tummy. But when her dad tells her the size of the baby at each stage, one little girl imagines all the fun she can have with her baby brother as a teeny-tiny poppy seed, then a grape, then a lemon… But she’s not quite sure how she feels about having an avocado for a brother. Or an onion. Or—gulp—a watermelon! - The Essential June Jordan
The Essential June Jordan
edited by Jan Heller Levi & Christoph Keller
Sold outHonored as a "Best Book of 2021" by Publishers Weekly
"This volume of verse displays the undeniable legacy June Jordan left on both our literature and culture. Collected here are blazing examples of poetry as activism, stanzas that speak truth to power and speak out against violence against women and police brutality. But Jordan also speaks on the significance of hope, mixing, as Brown puts it, 'the doom and devastation made mundane through media with the hard decision to love anyway.'"—O, The Oprah Magazine
"A selection of poems published between 1971 and 2001, this posthumous volume reflects Jordan’s view of poetry as 'a political action' that can 'build a revolution.' Her own work is filled with love and delight as well as revenge and justice."—New York Times Book Review, "Editor's Choice"
The Essential June Jordan honors the enduring legacy of a poet fiercely dedicated to building a better world. In this definitive volume, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, June Jordan’s generous body of poetry is distilled and curated to represent the very best of her works. Written over the span of several decades—from Some Changes in 1971 to Last Poems in 2001—Jordan’s poems are at once of their era and tragically current, with subject matter including racist police brutality, violence against women, and the opportunity for global solidarity amongst people who are marginalized or outside of the norm. In these poems of great immediacy and radical kindness, humor and embodied candor, readers will (re)discover a voice that has inspired generations of contemporary poets to write their truths. June Jordan is a powerful voice of the time-honored movement for justice, a poet for the ages. Introduced by Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer prize in poetry. - Caribbean Paleo : 75 Wholesome Dishes Celebrating Tropical Cuisine and Culture
Caribbean Paleo : 75 Wholesome Dishes Celebrating Tropical Cuisine and Culture
by Althea Brown
$23.99Whole30 certified coach and Guyanese cook Althea Brown showcases the best of Caribbean cuisine with 75 mouthwatering recipes remixed to fit a Paleo lifestyle.
Take a culinary trip to the Caribbean with Althea Brown’s lick-your-bowl-good dishes that are free from gluten, dairy and refined sugar. Althea highlights favorite dishes from her childhood in Guyana as well as recipes from Jamaica, Trinidad and more—all of which are full of bold flavors and fresh ingredients.
What could beat mouthwatering Jerk Chicken Under a Brick, Oven-Braised Oxtail or Brown Stew Fish? Perhaps only Althea’s Nutty Farine Pilaf, Salt Fish Cakes or craveable Coconut Sweet Bread! Recipes such as Shrimp Chow Mein, Cassava Couscous Salad and Pepper Steak swap out noodles and rice for nutrient-dense—and delicious!—ingredients like squash, cassava and cauliflower rice, resulting in wholesome Paleo-friendly meals that pack a big punch of flavor.
Whether you are reconnecting with family roots or looking to re-create your favorite dishes from a trip to the Caribbean, this collection is the only guide you’ll need to incorporate flavor-packed authentic dishes into your gluten-free, Paleo or Whole30 kitchen. - body rites: a holistic healing and embodiment workbook for Black survivors of sexual trauma
body rites: a holistic healing and embodiment workbook for Black survivors of sexual trauma
by shena j young & Aishah Shahidah Simmons
$24.99A written companion and workbook for readers seeking to reclaim their bodies as home in healing from sexual trauma.
Body rites as a holistic healing journey, anchored in the practice of decolonizing healing and reclaiming body sovereignty, reaches back into indigenous roots and land-based healing. It centers remembering as a means of survival.
This workbook is the first of its kind: a resource of rituals divided into four healing journeys for Black women, femmes, and nonbinary survivors of sexual assault. The experiential workbook moves beyond prescriptive self-help models by providing a gentle guide and liaison to explore the impact of sexual trauma on the mind, body, heart, and spirit. It is an invitation to heal holistically, drawing upon psychophysiology, lived body wisdom, trauma-informed embodiment practices, kinship and ancestral connections, and African spiritual practices. Most urgently, this book is a series of intimate conversations with your “self”; and remembrance that healing lives at the core of your intuition.
- New World Baking: 150 Recipes from Central America, South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
New World Baking: 150 Recipes from Central America, South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
by Bryan Ford
$38.00A groundbreaking new book from the Magnolia network TV star exploring the baking traditions of Latin America, infusing classic breads and pastries with new energy and introducing readers to the cultures and stories behind each recipe
Bryan Ford has changed the way the world sees baking; no longer the Euro-centric approach to the craft, he broadens the scope to celebrate the baking traditions of Latin America, starting with a simple approach to recipes and technique, and sharing the depth and nuance of the stories behind each loaf and pastry.
Taking a completely unique, yet long overdue approach, there is no book like New World Baking on the market. From Pan de Mole to Medialunas, Palmeritas to Pan Frances, and Flan to Arepa Dulce de Maiz, the recipes here will highlight the beauty and breadth of Latin American baking. This is an essential baking book for every home baker looking to expand their understanding of the history of the craft and explore the sweets and treats, breads and bakes of this region, from the Caribbean to Peru. - Evil Eye: A Novel
Evil Eye: A Novel
by Etaf Rum
$18.99The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of A Woman Is No Man returns with a striking exploration of the expectations of Palestinian-American women, the meaning of a fulfilling life, and the ways our unresolved pasts affect our presents.
“After Yara is placed on probation at work for fighting with a racist coworker, her Palestinian mother claims the provocation and all that’s come after were the result of a family curse. While Yara doesn’t believe in old superstitions, she finds herself unpacking her strict, often volatile childhood growing up in Brooklyn, looking for clues as to why she feels so unfulfilled in a life her mother could only dream of. Etaf Rum’s follow-up to her debut, A Woman Is No Man, is a complicated mother-daughter drama that looks at the lasting effects of intergenerational trauma and what it takes to break the cycle of abuse” (Time magazine).
- Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now
Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now
by Florence Ostende
$39.95Weems’ writings, lectures and conversations, published here for the first time, “beautify the mess of a messy world”
Widely considered to be one of the most influential living American artists, New York-based photographer and multimedia artist Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) has developed a practice celebrated for her exploration of cultural identity, power dynamics, intimacy and social justice through a body of work that challenges prevailing representations of race, gender and class. Defined by the use of photography, installation, film and performance, her remarkably diverse and radical oeuvre questions dominant ideologies and historical narratives disseminated within mass media. Published in the context of her solo exhibitions at Barbican Art Gallery London and Kunstmuseum Basel, this book brings together a selection of Weems’ own writings, lectures and conversations for the first time, providing her personal insights into themes such as the consequences of power, artistic appropriation and history-making.
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