In this companion to Bravo!, Margarita Engle's beautiful poetry introduces young readers to lesser-known Latinos from varied backgrounds who have all shown tremendous resilience.

Prepare to be inspired by this empowering collection of poetry that tells a larger story about fortitude and community across Hispanic history. From environmental activists such as Christina Figueres to record breaking athletes like Pelé, each role model featured is a legend in their own right. There’s no better time to champion the accomplishments of this remarkable group of unsung heroes from all across Latin America!

Those profiled in this collection include Anacaona, Martín de la Cruz and Juan Badiano, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, Simón Bolívar, Mariana Grajales Cuello, Ana Roqué de Duprey, Julio Garavito Armero, Ramón Fonst Segundo, Christiana Figueres, Juano Hernández, Gabriela Mistral, Martín Chambi de Coaza, Marina Núñez del Prado, Noé Canjura, Nicolás García Uriburu, Pelé, and Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

Michael Jackson’s closest sister pulls back the curtain to reveal the inner workings of the Jackson family, Michael’s tortured soul, and her own love for her brother in this intimate portrait of a beloved, yet troubled, pop legend.

In this shocking New York Times bestselling memoir, La Toya Jackson pays heartfelt tribute to her legendary brother Michael’s tortured soul and offers unprecedented insight into the troubled entertainer’s tragic destruction.

La Toya Jackson was always closer to Michael than anyone knew. Now, she sheds light on the intimate moments she shared with the beloved pop legend and unveils the disturbing behind-the-scenes dealings that she believes foretold his death. Like Michael, La Toya experienced an upbringing that made her vulnerable to exploitation, and her own journey led to hell and back at the hands of her former manager and husband. Here, in vivid and candid detail, she reveals the most painful episodes of her deeply personal story and explores how anyone—regardless of fame, fortune, or status—can be trapped in a cycle of abuse. La Toya ultimately found the courage to break free, rebuild her life and career, and reconcile with her close-knit family. Her unforgettable story will touch the hearts of millions of fans and inspire anyone who feels as if there’s nowhere to go that it is possible to truly start over...

Afro Samurai meets The Boondocks in this anime-inspired novel

I've wanted nothing more than to become a Sistah Samurai. When I was expelled from the training academy for sneaking in my stupid ex-boyfriend, I still had hope that I could cry enough to convince them to take me back. Then, demons invaded the capital and decimated the clan, and there went my dreams of ever naming my own pair of pink swords.

Until I heard a rumor of one last Sistah Samurai. I packed my favorite outfits and my trusty teddy bear, and recruited my forever bestie to help me find her. If we could manage not to interrupt her lunch, maybe we could convince her to train us? We were ready to do whatever she asked, even if that meant confronting old flames and taking down the patriarchy.

As long as we looked good while doing it.

The sequel of Sistah Samurai is an Action Fantasy novella that is an homage to the anime, Afro Samurai. Both works feature a feudal Japan-inspired setting that is rife with anachronisms. In the words of Samuel L. Jackson, “Is that a motherf—ing RPG?”

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: February 10, 2025

This gorgeous debut follows a young transsexual’s feverish passage through the envies and dreams that lace her initiation into New York City’s underground nightlife as she attempts to reconcile its predatory yet deeply salvational euphorias.

She moves to New York for whatever reasons. Then she starts hormones and steps out at night. Everything else falls away. How had it never not been this?

Quickly, Io—freshly feminized and hardly clothed—is yanked into the glamor and vagaries of her times by her obsessive parasocial relationship with a fellow trans woman and renowned DJ. In nightlife she quickly discovers the stakes of living so close to cultural production—fashion, art, literature, it all flashes and dies as her bank account stays empty and her health waxes and wanes.

The lines between transition and cultural capital begin to blur and the currency of femininity demands to sell or be sold. Io must decide how far she will go to attain the dreams of upward mobility free-wheeling through the cloaca of the City.

Sumptuous and tender portraits of an empowered Black queer experience

Eric Hart Jr.’s black-and-white photo series presents more than 70 portraits focusing on the notion of power as it relates to the Black queer experience. Begun in 2019, When I Think About Power investigates and expands the contemporary reimagining of men through themed chapters. “I'm fascinated with the intersectionality and the layers of what it means to be Black in the modern day,” he has said. “From masculinity, queerness, to dress, I strive to utilize image-making in a way that displays people like myself in all of their power and all of their beauty.” Hart's approach stems from his own journey toward self-acceptance growing up in Macon, Georgia. By visually exploring the differences and similarities between himself and the men who surround him, studying the words of Black queer icons and researching the visibility of power in eras such as the Ming dynasty or ancient Egypt, Hart has created an iconography of a power that so many queer individuals seek.
The work of Brooklyn-based photographer Eric Hart Jr. (born 1999) has been published in Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the New York Times and i-D magazine, and has been praised by artists such as Beyoncé and Spike Lee. Hart is a two-time Gordon Parks scholar, a 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 Art & Style choice, and in 2020 was named one of Men's Health magazine's “20-year-old mavericks changing America.”

PRE-ORDER. On Sale: June 26, 2026 (English-edition) 

PRE-ORDER. On Sale: July 5, 2026 (Spanish-edition)

A Spanish-language edition of a concise, engaging, and thoroughly revised overview of Cuba written by Cubans for anyone interested in quickly understanding the island country’s turbulent history.

Un conciso, ameno resumen de Cuba para cualquiera interesado en comprender rápidamente la turbulenta historia de este país insular.

Cuba: A Brief History covers the pre-Hispanic period, through Cuba’s struggle to maintain the revolution in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the period after Fidel Castro’s decision to step down from office, to the 2014 opening to Cuba by the Obama Administration, the retirement of Raul Castro and his replacement as president in 2018 by Miguel Diaz Canal, and finally to the reversal of Washington’s engagement with Cuba under President Trump. This slim volume provides the reader with an overview of the history and politics of the tiny Caribbean island that continues to appear at the center of world events.

Featuring a presentation and analysis of US intervention on the island, Cuba: A Brief History also includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading. This is an essential introduction to Cuba for students, visitors, and others looking for a bird’s eye view of the turbulent history of the island that has captivated and enthralled its northern neighbors for decades.

Cuba: Una Breve Historia abarca el período prehispánico, la lucha de Cuba por mantener viva la revolución en los años siguientes al colapso de la Unión Soviética, el período luego de la decisión de Fidel Castro de ceder su puesto, la apertura de Cuba en el 2014 a la Administración de Obama, la jubilación de Raúl Castro y su reemplazo por Miguel Díaz-Canel como presidente en el 2018, y la revocación de parte del presidente Trump del compromiso de Washington con Cuba. Este corto volumen provee al lector con un pantallazo de la historia y la política de la pequeña isla caribeña que continúa siendo el foco de sucesos mundiales.

Incluye una presentación y análisis de la intervención estadounidense en la isla, Cuba: Una Breve Historia también incluye notas al pie y una bibliografía de lecturas complementarias. Esta es una introducción esencial a Cuba para estudiantes, turistas y todo aquel que desea un vistazo de pájaro de la turbulenta historia de la isla que ha cautivado y fascinado a sus vecinos del norte hace décadas.

Loving the Dying is a collection of poems on life’s different stages. Set against the backdrop of a conflicted society, Len Verwey looks at a person’s life from youth and growing up to aging and dying, considering what the ineluctable reality of death might imply about how we should think about our lives.

These are poems of uncertainty rather than certainty. The more overtly biographical ones end with as many questions as they start with, and there is often sympathy for the outsider or the marginalized voice. Varying in tone and complexity, Verwey’s poems focus on the tension between escapism and reality, truth and delusion (for individuals and societies), and the need to face death if we are to care for the aged and learn to understand the process of dying.

As in his first poetry collection, In a Language That You Know, Verwey continues his effort to understand the successes and failures of the South African post-apartheid journey, with both humor and some despair.

The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson

‘Johnson is a leading voice of his generation.’ – New York Times

The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson

Working with a variety of media that includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, Rashid Johnson has created a nuanced and iconographic body of work that connects literature, music, and art. Personal references and pervasive cultural narratives are interweaved with the legacy of modernist abstraction, producing what critics have labelled ‘conceptual post-black art’. A precocious talent (his work was included in the seminal ‘Freestyle’ exhibition in New York in 2001), Johnson received the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize, which honours contributions in the field of African-American art.

Featured on NPR's Morning Edition

A Best Book of the Year at The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Poetry School, New York Public Library, and Entropy Magazine

Winner of the Ted Hughes Award, Rathbones Folio Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award; finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and Reading the West Book Award

In the wake of his father’s death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus’ The Perseverance travels to Barcelona. In Gaudi’s Cathedral, he meditates on the idea of silence and sound, wondering whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. Receiving information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea. “Even though,” he says, “I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer.”

The Perseverance is a collection of poems examining a d/Deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education, and language, both spoken and signed. It is a book about communication and connection, about cultural inheritance, about identity in a hearing world that takes everything for granted, about the dangers we may find (both individually and as a society) if we fail to understand each other.

A Guardian Best Book of the Year

Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Costa Poetry Award

“Exquisite.” ―The New York Times Book Review

“Brave, tender and generous. . . . A haunting study of what we can find in the silences of history when history is recognized as more than a noun, when recognized as something alive and kinetic.” ―Camonghne Felix, author of Build Yourself a Boat

On the heels of his much-lauded debut collection, Raymond Antrobus continues his essential investigation into language, miscommunication, place, and memory in All The Names Given, while simultaneously breaking new ground in both form and content. 

The collection opens with poems about the author’s surname―one that shouldn’t have survived into modernity―and examines the rich and fraught history carried within it. As Antrobus outlines a childhood caught between intimacy and brutality, sound and silence, and conflicting racial and cultural identities, the poem becomes a space in which the poet reckons with his own ancestry, and bears witness to the indelible violence of the legacy wrought by colonialism. The poems travel through space―shifting fluidly between England, South Africa, Jamaica, and the American South―and brilliantly move from an examination of family history into the wandering lust of adolescence and finally, vividly, into a complex array of marriage poems―matured, wiser, and more accepting of love’s fragility. Throughout, All The Names Given is punctuated with [Caption Poems] partially inspired by Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, in which the art of writing captions attempts to fill in the silences and transitions between the poems as well as moments inside and outside of them. 

Formally sophisticated, with a weighty perception and startling directness, All The Names Given is a timely, tender book full of humanity and remembrance from one of the most important young poets of our generation.

From Cornelius Eady, one of America's most engaging voices, comes an exciting collection of poetry that at once delineates the arc of the poet's universe and highlights the range of his considerable talents.

Cornelius Eady’s poems show him in full control of his considerable talents and displaying a rich maturity as he enters midlife. His poems are sly, unsentimental, and witty, full of truths that are intimate and profound.

Hardheaded Weather ranges widely, reflecting the new found responsibilities Eady has assumed as he transitions from urban renter to nonplussed rural homeowner, as well as the sobering influence of war and the intimation of his own mortality. Yet even at his angriest, the poet has always had a depth of compassion rare in our polarized age, with a sense of humor that is both sophisticated and demotic. These poems will resonate deeply.

As exciting as the new poems are, his selected earlier poems dazzle, too, as they demonstrate the arc of Cornelius Eady’s maturation and the originality of his voice. Taken together, Hardheaded Weather forms a moving—and sometimes searing—testament to the power of poetry.

A dazzling hybrid of personal memoir and criticism, considering the work of Black visual artists as a means to explore loss, legacy, and the reclamation of life through art.

At the age of twenty-one, Erica Cardwell finds herself in New York City, reeling from the loss of her mother and numb to the world around her. She turns inward instead, reading books and composing poetry, eventually falling into the work of artists such as Blondell Cummings, Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O’Grady, and Kara Walker. Through them, she communes with her mother’s spirit and legacy, and finds new ways to interrogate her writing and identity.

Wrong Is Not My Name weaves together autobiography, criticism, and theory, and considers how Black women create alternative, queer, and “hysterical” lives through visual culture and performance. In poetic, interdisciplinary essays—combining analytical and lyrical stream-of-consciousness—Cardwell examines archetypes such as the lascivious Jezebel, the caretaking Mammy, and the elusive Sapphire to formulate new and inventive ways to write about art.

Pioneering and inquisitive, Wrong Is Not My Name celebrates Black womanhood, and illuminates the ways in which art and storytelling reside at the core of being human.

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck: A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.

Despite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventor, a non-invisible man belonging to the Dominant Population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere. 

A manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.

With the captivating worldbuilding of N. K. Jemisin’s novels and blazing defiance of Naomi Alderman’s work, This Great Hemisphere is a novel that brilliantly illustrates the degree to which reality can be shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations, while shining a light on our ability to surprise ourselves when we stop giving in to the narratives others have written for us.

Mazes and mind games await in this epic third book about the theme park of your dreams, where Cam Walker goes head-to-head with the villains who have been after Futureland from the start. An electrifying illustrated series for fans of Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

"Hold on tight, Futureland will be the ride of your life . . . and maybe the last!" —Kwame Mbalia, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Team Futureland. Their archenemies. A showdown in spectacularly futuristic Egypt.

After Futureland emerges from back-to-back scandals, Cam Walker and his family are ready to confront the people who keep targeting their flying park. A group called the Architects has been after them since Futureland made its Atlanta stop, and the Walkers have had enough.

To settle things, the Architects propose the very first Architect Games, where the Walkers and the Architects will battle in a series of challenges. If the Walkers win, then the Architects will leave them alone once and for all. But if Cam and his family lose, they will lose everything—including Futureland and its prized tech.

The Architects can't be trusted, but Cam doesn't have a choice. If he can lead his team to victory, his family and friends will be free. Otherwise, there's no telling what the Architects will do once they get their hands on Futureland. . . .

Black history, cultural expression, and the natural world fuse in Janice N. Harrington’s Yard Show to investigate how Black Americans have shaped a sense of belonging and place within the Midwestern United States. As seen through the documentation of objects found within yard shows, this collection of descriptive, lyrical, and experimental poems speaks to the Black American Imagination in all its multiplicity.

Harrington’s speaker is a chronicler of yesterdays, using the events of the past to center and advocate for a future that celebrates pleasure and self-fulfillment within Black communities.

This long-awaited and much-needed volume shines new light on one of America’s most beloved, and profound, poets—Lucille Clifton.

Black Buffalo Woman is a deep, comprehensive dive into Clifton’s work through the eyes of celebrated poet and scholar, Kazim Ali. 

Collecting chapters of Clifton’s early manuscripts, late drafts, and integrating her books of children’s literature, Ali’s meticulously researched volume provides a brilliant and fresh perspective on Clifton’s life and work.

Various chapters examine Clifton’s treatment of the body as a site of both joy and danger, spirituality, and an interrogation of American history, politics, and popular culture. The result of Ali’s scholarship and care highlights a dazzling array of Clifton’s poetic techniques and forms that will continue to inspire poets, readers, and Lucille Clifton fans—past, present and future—for decades to come.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
A National Book Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book

From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated.

In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I'm Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.

Have you recently had a c-section?
Are you struggling with recovery - but want to come back stronger?
Looking for advice on your scar, your pelvic floor health, or a return to exercise?

The 360 Mama Guide to C-Section Recovery gives everything you need to fully heal from your c-section, answering all your questions and offering practical, expert-led advice at a time when you may feel lost or unsupported.
 
Written by the hugely successful 360 Mama postnatal recovery team, this expert-led book leaves nothing out. From how to prepare for a c-section, to strategies you can put in place from the earliest moments to support the healing process, to guidance on wound care and scar massage, there is practical guidance for every new mama. You will find exercises to strengthen and rehabilitate your core, improve any overhang, and help you return to full physical activity. Featuring real-life birth stories and experiences, as well as advice on coping with birth trauma and managing your mental health post-birth, this empowering guide will help you to reclaim the narrative and to fully enjoy motherhood.

This authoritative, focused and bestselling guide by two of the UK's brightest young entrepreneurs - The Apprentice runner-up, Bianca Miller-Cole and serial entrepreneur, Dr Byron Cole - is a comprehensive toolkit for anyone who wants to make a success of running their own business. Featuring interviews with well known entrepreneurs, entertainers and industry experts, the book covers every tier of the business development process, from start-up to exit, offering practical, implementable and global advice on the start up process.

This fully updated new edition will de-code the jargon that is prevalent in business circles today, providing straightforward advice on converting an innovative business concept into a commercially viable proposition. It will help you to avoid the costly common mistakes of many who have gone before you, and create a sustainable enterprise that will flourish. Fully updated and expanded to make it more timely, more international, more practical and more inspiring, it will be a vital tool for Entrepreneurs both inside and outside of the author's hugely motivated network.

Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, One Way Witch is the second in the She Who Knows trilogy

The world has forgotten Onyesonwu.

As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and dust: the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy — until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed.

Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.

When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past — for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.

From Ross Mathews (The Drew Barrymore Show and RuPaul’s Drag Race) and his husband, Dr. Wellinthon García-Mathews, comes a heartwarming and humorous tale of love and family as two young boys travel to Mexico to be ring bearers in their uncles’ wedding.

From Emmy-winning TV host and producer Ross Mathews (The Drew Barrymore Show and RuPaul’s Drag Race) and Dr. Wellinthon García-Mathews comes a heartwarming and humorous tale of family, friendship, and love inspired by their real-life wedding.

Evan and Andy are excited to visit Mexico for their uncles’ wedding—and their parents are excited that the boys will have a chance to experience the culture, practice their Spanish, and learn responsibility as ring bearers in the ceremony. Once they arrive, Evan and Andy just want to play soccer, swim, and eat all the great food. However, once the festivities are in full swing and the boys witness the love and happiness between their two tíos, they quickly embrace their role in their uncles’ very special day.

This debut picture book written by Ross Mathews and Dr. Wellinthon García-Mathews, and illustrated by Tommy Doyle, reminds us about the importance of love, family, and embracing one’s cultural identity.

As featured in The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Holiday Gift Books: Fine Art

The definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam one of the great innovators in post-war American painting

An African American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sam Gilliam blazed a trail with his singular artistic vision. Gilliam emerged from the Washington, DC art scene in the mid 1960s with works that disrupted established artistic norms and styles.

Relentlessly experimental and inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, Gilliam’s lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

This book, made in close collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, is the first to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career, and features never-before-seen archival materials an insightful newly commissioned texts that shine light on the artist, his life, and his work, together with examples of Gilliam's work spanning five decades.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it.

Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X. Her unique vantage on American history pushes the boundaries of personal narrative and academic authorship. Led by an unbridled curiosity for her subjects, Painter asks readers to reconsider ideas of race, politics, and identity. I Just Keep Talking assembles her writing for the first time into a single volume, displaying the breadth and depth of Painter’s decades-long historical inquiry and the evolution of Black political thought—and includes a dazzling introduction and coda being published for the first time in this collection. From her mining of figures like Carrie Buck and Martin Delaney for their resonance today, to a deep dive into the history of exclusion through the work of Toni Morrison, to a discussion of the American political landscape after the 2016 election, Painter nimbly portrays the trials of a country frequently at war with itself.

Along with Painter’s writing, this collection offers her original artwork, threaded throughout the book as counterpoint and emphasis. Her visual art shows a deft mind turning toward the tragedy and humor of her subjects; pulling from newspapers, personal records, and original sketches, Painter’s artwork testifies to the dialectic of tremendous change and stasis that continues to shape American history.

These essays resist easy answers in favor of complexity, the inescapable sense of our country’s potential thwarted by its failures. This collection will surely solidify Painter’s place among the finest critics and writers of the last half century.

A truly unfortunate first day of work leads to unexpected love in this sparkling debut from Romance in Colour podcast cohost Tati Richardson.

Rumpled and ragged was not how architect Ari James envisioned kicking off her first day at a new firm. And few things can top the horror of her new—and extremely hot—colleague walking in on her at the worst moment ever. Learning that she’ll be working with him on the project that’s supposed to get her career back on top makes it harder than ever to focus on her big comeback.

With a partnership at his firm on the line, nothing is going to stand in the way of Porter Harrison absolutely killing it on his new project: not his obnoxious rival, not his unpredictable brother and definitely not his new coworker whose gorgeous curves he accidentally saw and now can’t get out of his head.

Though neither of them is looking for love, once their creative juices get flowing, Ari and Porter’s connection is obvious. But when their shared goal has always been winning at work, building a solid foundation for a relationship might end up costing them everything…

Doggerel is a revelatory meditation on Blackness, masculinity, and vulnerability from one of poetry’s boldest voices.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is our foremost chronicler of the ways prison shapes and transforms American life. In Doggerel, Betts examines this subject through a more prosaic―but equally rich―lens: dogs. He reminds us that, as our lives are broken and put back together, the only witness often barks instead of talks. In these poems, which touch on companionship in its many forms, Betts seamlessly and skillfully deploys the pantoum, ghazal, and canzone, in conversation with artists such as Freddie Gibbs and Lil Wayne.

Simultaneously philosophical and playful, Doggerel is a meditation on family, falling in love, friendship, and those who accompany us on our walk through life. Balancing political critique with personal experience, Betts once again shows us “how poems can be enlisted to radically disrupt narrative” (Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker)―and, in doing so, reveals the world anew.

“. . . every story becomes a multiplication,

If the naming is filled less with names than

With the best parts, the barking & everything

Else, because who among us hasn’t been

As mangy as a rescue, even on our best

Days, desiring mostly to be loved.”

―from “Rings”

"Smith’s powerful style of living journalism uses the collective, cathartic nature of the theater to move us from despair toward hope.” —The Village Voice 

Anna Deavere Smith’s extraordinary form of documentary theater shines a light on injustices by portraying the real-life people who have experienced them. "One of her most ambitious and powerful works on how matters of race continue to divide and enslave the nation” (Variety). 

Smith renders a host of figures who have lived and fought the system that pushes students of color out of the classroom and into prisons. (As Smith has put it: “Rich kids get mischief, poor kids get pathologized and incarcerated.”)

Using people’s own words, culled from interviews and speeches, Smith depicts Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant, who eulogized Freddie Gray; Niya Kenny, a high school student who confronted a violent police deputy; activist Bree Newsome, who took the Confederate flag down from the South Carolina State House grounds; and many others. Their voices bear powerful witness to a great iniquity of our time—and call us to action with their accounts of resistance and hope.

From the award-winning actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, two teeming, pungent cross-sections of the American experience.

In the provocative and at times bitterly funny play House Arrest, Smith examines the relationships between a succession of American presidents and their observers in and out of the press. Arcing from Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to Jefferson and Sally Hemings and alive with the voices of such real-life figures as Ed Bradley, George Stephanopoulos, Anita Hill, and Abraham Lincoln, the result is a priceless examination of the intersection of public power and private life.

In Piano, Smith casts her gaze back a century as she follows the tangled lines of race, sex, and exploitation in a prosperous Cuban household on the eve of the Spanish-American War. Deftly and suspensefully, Smith tells a story of ruptured allegiances and ramifying deceptions in which no one—master or servant, friend or enemy—is what he or she pretends to be. Together these two plays are further proof that Anna Deavere Smith is one of the most searing and revelatory voices in the American theater.

How American architecture can address systemic anti-Black racism: a creative challenge in 10 case studies

A New York Times critics' pick | Best Art Books 2021

Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America is an urgent call for architects to accept the challenge of reconceiving and reconstructing our built environment rather than continue giving shape to buildings, infrastructure and urban plans that have, for generations, embodied and sustained anti-Black racism in the United States.

The architects, designers, artists and writers who were invited to contribute to this book―and to the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art for which it serves as a “field guide”―reimagine the legacies of race-based dispossession in 10 American cities (Atlanta; Brooklyn, New York; Kinloch, Missouri; Los Angeles; Miami; Nashville; New Orleans; Oakland; Pittsburgh; and Syracuse) and celebrate the ways individuals and communities across the country have mobilized Black cultural spaces, forms and practices as sites of imagination, liberation, resistance, care and refusal.

A broad range of essays by the curators and prominent scholars from diverse fields, as well as a portfolio of new photographs by the artist David Hartt, complement this volume’s richly illustrated presentations of the architectural projects at the heart of MoMA’s groundbreaking exhibition.

Decolonizing Bodies offers novel theorizations of how racial capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchal violence erode the bodily schema and experiences of racialized and colonized populations, profoundly constraining their being in the world. The book invigorates embodiment studies by centering the experiences and struggles of Black, Indigenous, colonized, disabled, queer, and racialized subjects, showing how they live these displacements and disintegrations.

The volume powerfully demonstrates how racism and colonialism sediment in bodily and habitual registers that are active, ongoing, made and remade. Bodies, the contributors argue, powerfully register the impacts of colonial and racialized violence, but through practices of embodiment, they also digest, expel, and transform them. In centering non-normative subjective experiences and making space for different kinds of embodied knowledge, Decolonizing Bodies also takes a step toward decolonizing academic knowledge.

This exciting and urgent book offers readers new ways of imagining, choreographing and enacting the body. Beyond connecting distant geographies of harm, it celebrates polymorphous decolonial repertoires that record, creatively narrate, and heal.

A cunning teen memory merchant falls for the handsome rookie officer on her tail in this swoony dystopian romance that's “one to watch” (Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of The Isles of the Gods)

In 2364, eighteen-year-old Liv Newman dreams of a future beyond her lower-class life in the Metro. As a Proxy, she uses the neurochip in her brain to sell memories to wealthy clients. Maybe a few illegally, but money equals freedom. So when a customer offers her a ludicrous sum to go on an assignment in no-man’s-land, Liv accepts. Now she just has to survive.

Rookie Forceman Adrian Rao believes in order over all. After discovering that a renegade Proxy’s shady dealings are messing with citizens’ brain chemistry, he vows to extinguish the threat. But when he tracks Liv down, there’s one problem: her memories are gone. Can Adrian bring himself to condemn her for crimes she doesn’t remember?

As Liv and Adrian navigate the world beyond the Metro and their growing feelings for one another, they grapple with who they are, who they could be, and whether another way of living is possible.

For readers of Vanessa Miller, Sheila Williams, Victoria Christopher Murray and Tracy Chevalier, the story of an unconventional woman who overcame adversity to create enduring tributes in stone to her race and times. The life of pioneering Black Neoclassical sculptor Edmonia Lewis – from the Civil War-era Midwest to Boston’s abolitionist circles, to Rome’s expatriate community – is resurrected in this stunning debut biographical novel.

“I plan to be a sculptor, to memorialize forever the great men and women of my race, and those who have fought for our cause.”

At the age of 8, orphaned, precocious Wildfire seems fated to a life of toil selling her handmade crafts to Niagara Falls tourists alongside her Ojibwe aunts. But Wildfire’s older half-brother, Samuel, has been making other plans for his gifted sibling. Soon, she is set on a new trajectory—and with it comes her birth name, Edmonia, and a revelation about her true origins.

Ensconced at the home of a trusted benefactor while Samuel makes his fortune in California, Edmonia flourishes—despite her abhorrence for etiquette lessons. Privately nurturing artistic ambitions, she advances through the abolitionist’s prep school and lands at Oberlin College. But at Oberlin lies a devastating trap: Edmonia is accused of poisoning, nearly fatally, two friends, with tainted wine.

What ensues is a headline-making trial, a vicious attack by a white mob—and a bold journey that will lead Edmonia from a crucial introduction in Boston to a vibrant community of celebrated expatriate women artists in Rome, and encounters with such distinguished figures as President Ulysses S. Grant, Pope Pius IX, and Frederick Douglass.

Still, Edmonia’s success is plagued by stinging critiques, potent racism, and haunting self-doubt. She must decide, too, whether to abandon her romantic entanglements, or devote herself to bringing to life her visions of beauty and justice—and hopefully, forge her place in a rapidly changing world.