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  • There’s A Unicorn In My Backyard

    MR.TOMONOSHi!

    $24.00

    "There's a Unicorn in My Backyard" is a celebration of creativity and the belief that anything is possible. Dive into a story where a curious mind and a daring heart fuel incredible invention—and magical discoveries. Follow Carolina Blue, the clever and determined protagonist, as she transforms everyday objects into extraordinary creations in her quest to capture the unicorn that dances just beyond reach.

    This is a tale of wild imagination, bold innovation, and design thinking in action. Vibrant illustrations and playful storytelling combine to inspire kids to dream big, think critically, and turn their ideas into reality. "There's a Unicorn in My Backyard" is not just a book—it’s an invitation to reimagine the world around us, one creative solution at a time.

    Build. Dream. Discover. Let the magic unfold!

    Adventure Awaits…

  • Black Performance Theory

    Thomas F. DeFrantz

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    Black performance theory is a rich interdisciplinary area of study and critical method. This collection of new essays by some of its pioneering thinkers—many of whom are performers—demonstrates the breadth, depth, innovation, and critical value of black performance theory. Considering how blackness is imagined in and through performance, the contributors address topics including flight as a persistent theme in African American aesthetics, the circulation of minstrel tropes in Liverpool and in Afro-Mexican settlements in Oaxaca, and the reach of hip-hop politics as people around the world embrace the music and dance. They examine the work of contemporary choreographers Ronald K. Brown and Reggie Wilson, the ways that African American playwrights translated the theatricality of lynching to the stage, the ecstatic music of Little Richard, and Michael Jackson's performance in the documentary This Is It. The collection includes several essays that exemplify the performative capacity of writing, as well as discussion of a project that re-creates seminal hip-hop album covers through tableaux vivants. Whether deliberating on the tragic mulatta, the trickster figure Anansi, or the sonic futurism of Nina Simone and Adrienne Kennedy, the essays in this collection signal the vast untapped critical and creative resources of black performance theory.

    Contributors. Melissa Blanco Borelli, Daphne A. Brooks, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Nadine George-Graves, Anita Gonzalez, Rickerby Hinds, Jason King, D. Soyini Madison, Koritha Mitchell, Tavia Nyong'o, Carl Paris, Anna B. Scott, Wendy S. Walters, Hershini Bhana Young

  • PRE-ORDER: The Echo of Forever

    Asia Monique

    $25.00

    PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE September 22, 2025

    The King of Rejectors

    The Collective took from me…

    Demetrius Cannon had everything to lose and nothing to gain if he allowed the society to walk all over him. He was determined to eliminate every threat to his family’s bloodline, even if it meant going up against a group more powerful than he could ever be.

    …and it was time I took it all back.

    The Broker of Assassins

    I bled for the Collective…

    Forever James had the world at her fingertips, but couldn’t fathom what real freedom looked like. She was determined to break away from the society her family had been loyal to for generations, even if it meant she died trying.

    …and it was time I made them bleed for me.

  • Blue Futures, Break Open: A Novel

    Zoë Gadegbeku

    $19.99

    Blue Basin Island is the final resting spot of formerly enslaved Africans whose souls have flown from Earth—not to heaven or purgatory but toward freedom and a new life. Lucille, the island’s seamstress, takes two forms. She lives among the inhabitants in human form and, along with the evil-repelling blue of the houses, her divine form protects people from the violence of the their former lives. Yet, even there, outside of time, the souls are not totally insulated from the world in which they were enslaved. Each time a Black person anywhere is harmed, a piece of Blue Basin disintegrates: an earthquake leaves hundreds of thousands dead, and bricks crumble on the island; when police kill a Black child asleep in her bed, the blue paint on homes throughout the island drips and then runs from the walls. Lucille must hold the island together, but she struggles to juggle the responsibility of ensuring everyone’s safety while also seeking and losing her own private love. Grounding the story in African folklore and dipping into the rich literary tradition around African people with the power of flight, Zoë Gadegbeku visualizes the destination at the end of the flight and the new life that awaits them.

  • You've Got a Place Here, Too: An Anthology of Black Love Stories Set at HBCUs

    Ebony LaDelle

    $29.00

    A heartwarming and unforgettable collection of love stories set at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, exploring hope, endurance, and what it means to leave a legacy, from some of today’s most prominent Black writers and edited by the acclaimed author of Love Radio

    Love can be messy, painful, and heartbreaking, but it can also be revolutionary, profound, and hopeful. For Celine, a forbidden crush on a professor evolves into a second chance at romance years later. Myra’s focus on a coveted audition for the Fisk Jubilee Singers is challenged by the handsome music major determined to help her. Kiese investigates the darker side to academia, love, and identity. Like most blessings, love emerges in the most unexpected places—in a training cockpit for new pilots, during a Mardi Gras celebration, or while gathering signatures to start the first-ever LGBTQ+ student organization officially recognized at an HBCU.

    These are just a few of the heart-searing, tender, and transporting love stories collected in You’ve Got a Place Here, Too—a true celebration of Black love and the profound impact of HBCUs on the community.

    Featuring stories by Elizabeth Acevedo, Jasmine Bell, Carla Bruce, Aaron Foley, Kai Harris, Ebony LaDelle, Kiese Laymon, Christine Platt, Farrah Rochon, Kennedy Ryan, Dawnie Walton, and Nicola Yoon.

  • Decolonising the Mind : The Politics of Language in African Literature

    Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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    A collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity, that advocates for linguistic decolonization.

    'The language of literature', Ngũgĩ writes, 'cannot be discussed meaningfully outside the context of those social forces which have made it both an issue demanding our attention, and a problem calling for a resolution.' First published in 1986, Decolonising the Mind is one of Ngũgĩ's best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a pre-eminent voice theorizing the 'language debate' in postcolonial studies.

    Ngũgĩ wrote his first novels and plays in English but was determined, even before his detention without trial in 1978, to move to writing in Gikuyu. He describes the book as 'a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism, and in teaching of literature...'. Split into four essays - 'The Language of African Literature', 'The Language of African Theatre', 'The Language of African Fiction', and 'The Quest for Relevance' - the book offers an anti-imperialist perspective on the destiny of Africa and the role of languages in combatting and perpetrating imperialism and neo-colonialism in African nations.

  • The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters

    Sasha Bonét

    $30.00

    A sweeping narrative of the unique beauty and trials of Black matriarchy in America that weaves a sharp, tender examination of three single Black mothers—the author's grandmother, mother, and the author herself—with stories of influential Black women in our culture

    "Bonét tells the whole history of this country through the relationships of and between Black mothers and daughters."—Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

    “Bonét dances on our hearts in this classic creation of will and wit. Electrifying... Wow.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

    Betty Jean, the author’s grandmother, had a house along a bayou in Texas, a home paid for and run without a man by her side. This home served as the center of Bonét’s family’s universe, the one place that was a constant through all of life’s changes.

    Mama Connie, one of Betty Jean’s eleven children, vowed that her life would be different. And in many ways it was: she got married, lived in suburbia, and built a life resembling the American dream. But when it came to raising children of her own, she was more like Betty Jean than she cared to admit. But, like her mother before her, Connie’s sweat was the founding salt of her own universe.

    Today, Sasha Bonét navigates all aspects of being a mother—escape, promise, burden, assent, and rebellion—not just for the women in her family who came before her, but for Black women with whom society is acquainted, too: figures like Nina Simone, Betty Davis, and Darnella Frazier, who filmed the murder of George Floyd.

    Generations of Black women have borne children, borne the burdens of events untold, and borne witness to unspeakable trials. The Waterbearers carries this history, its fierce eloquence capturing a masterpiece of life written by an author who is intimately acquainted with how Black women have passed down knowledge and culture. Sasha Bonét doesn’t just present genealogical lineages but illuminates the cultural and societal connections of strong Black women who have built legacies and changed the world, sometimes in the most mundane of moments. The fierce eloquence of this story confirms Sasha Bonét as a voice we all now need to hear.

  • Year of Yes: 10th Anniversary Edition

    Shonda Rhimes

    $30.00

    The 10th anniversary hardcover edition of the galvanizing New York Times bestseller The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes—executive producer of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte, and more—features updates and exclusive new chapters that show how saying YES (and continuing to say YES) can transform your life.

    In 2015, Shonda Rhimes, the trailblazing creative force behind some of television’s most beloved series, took on a challenge that would change her life forever. She challenged herself to say “yes” to everything for a year, and the results were nothing short of transformative. Hailed as “honest, raw, and revelatory” (The Washington Post) and “as fun to read as Rhimes’s TV series are to watch” (Los Angeles Times), Year of Yes quickly became a New York Times bestseller, captivating thousands with its candid and compelling narrative.

    Now, in the 10th anniversary edition of Year of Yes, Shonda revisits this pivotal year with fresh insights and exclusive new material, including a new introduction and a bonus chapter.

    With humor and honesty, Shonda’s story encourages readers to step out of their own comfort zones and embrace new opportunities. A self-proclaimed introvert who often said “no,” Shonda’s year of yes was transformational—and yet entirely relatable. This wildly candid and compulsively readable book reveals how the mega-talented Shonda Rhimes achieved badassery worthy of a Shondaland character. And how you can, too.

  • Ella Gets the D

    Tanvier Peart

    $18.99

    The end of my marriage was the beginning of my happily ever after.

    What happens when you hear your husband putting dents in your mattress with another woman?

    Leave and never look back!

    Easier said than done when you're a stay-at-home mom, share two kids with the no-good cheater, and have a savings account that laughs in your face on the daily.

    I want out and agree to an outrageous separation agreement to avoid a showdown in court with a man standing on his wallet, waiting for me to fall. The mission is next to impossible, but I would rather attempt a full split on a hibachi grill after a Brazilian wax than stay in a marriage I should've ended years ago.

    Morgan, my best friend, offers a gorgeous townhouse her family owns to get me back on my feet. Eight months rent-free equals one step closer to Divorced AF.

    I didn't expect moms gone wild at my divorce party, but one fruity cocktail led to me staying out past my bedtime and the steamiest dream with a man straight from fantasies.

    Every kiss, every caress, made me feel worshipped. Adored.

    When Morgan offered this Georgetown home, she failed to mention it belongs to her younger brother, one of DC's most eligible bachelors. He's very fine, not a dream, and back early from time away in London.

    Now, we're staring at each other, dumbfounded and turned on.

    Ella Gets the D is a standalone divorce romantic comedy perfect for lovers of cinnamon roll heroes, a tired mom getting her groove back, tacos, and lots of spice (we kick the door wide open). This isn't your fluffy rom-com. Somebody might catch a case.

  • Make Your Way Home : Stories

    Carrie R. Moore

    $17.99

    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.

  • Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business

    Roxane Gay

    Sold out

    From beloved and bestselling author Roxane Gay, “a strikingly fresh cultural critic” (Washington Post) comes an exhilarating collection of her essays on culture, politics, and everything in between.

    Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy—alongside more individually personalized matters: can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights.

    Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay’s best nonfiction pieces from the past ten years. Covering a wide range of topics—politics, feminism, the culture wars, civil rights, and much more—with an all-new introduction in which she reflects on the past decade in America, this sharp, thought-provoking anthology will delight Roxane Gay’s devotees and draw new readers to this inimitable talent.

  • Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed

    Dashka Slater

    $20.99

    Not funny. When a high schooler started a private Instagram that used racist and sexist memes to make his friends laugh, he thought of it as “edgy” humor. Over time, the edge got sharper. Then a few other kids found out about the account. Pretty soon, everyone knew.

    No one in the small town of Albany, California, was safe from the repercussions of the account’s discovery. Not the girls targeted by the posts. Not the boy who created the account. Not the group of kids who followed it. Not the adults whose attempts to fix things too often made them worse. In the end, no one was laughing. And everyone was left asking: Where does accountability end for online speech that harms? And what does accountability even mean?

  • D is for Dance: Dancing Through the Diaspora: Dancing Through the Diaspora: Dancing Through the Diaspora

    Stacey Allen

    $25.00

    Journey through the vibrant world of the African Diaspora with this captivating exploration of movement and culture. With each letter, uncover fascinating stories of legendary dancers, iconic styles, and the powerful cultural expressions that unite us all. Perfect for young readers, educators, and dance enthusiasts, this book is a joyful celebration of movement, history, and the enduring legacy of African diasporic traditions. Get ready to step, spin, and soar through the alphabet-one dance at a time!

  • Lucy Sings on Lucy Street

    Lawrence Roberts

    $19.99

    This inspiring historical picture book based on the childhood of Lucy Tolliver, the mother of Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts, and written by her siblings, Sally-Ann Roberts and Lawrence Roberts, tells of the uplifting power that music has in keeping hope alive, even in times of strife.

    "A sweet snapshot of an inspiring girl who finds hope in song." —Kirkus Reviews

    ?"A heartfelt remembrance that encourages readers to find the light in hard times." —School Library Journal

    Life is filled with ups and downs.

    No matter what, keep a song in your heart.

    Keep singing. 

    For Lucimarian “Lucy” Tolliver, life on Lucy Street was nothing but a joyful dream. She spent her days happily playing in the neighborhood with her best friend, Wanda, and her grandpa’s wise words and warm embrace were only a few blocks away. However, when financial misfortune strikes Lucy and her family during the Depression, she struggles to hold on to the optimism that’s always kept her spirit lifted. But can one night—and one song—remind her that the light can continue to shine even in the darkest of times?

    From Sally-Ann Roberts and Lawrence Roberts comes a heartwarming and moving tale based on their mother's childhood, about the uplifting power that music has with keeping hope alive in times of extreme strife, featuring an epilogue from Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts.

  • Big Nick Energy

    Danielle Allen

    $16.00

    Hamilton University’s Homecoming is always a good time. Typically, it’s just a weekend of football, fun, and reconnecting. But this year is different.

    My wildly popular and incredibly sexy college crush is finally single!

    Nick Williams had no idea who I was. He was completely out of my league in undergrad.
    But we’re grown now.

    And this homecoming weekend, I’m going to find out if the big man on campus is really a big man

  • How to Work with Complicated People: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with (Nearly) Anyone

    Ryan Leak

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    Bestselling author and transformational speaker Ryan Leak shares research-based strategies for working with even the most challenging people to create more collaborative and productive teams.

    Who is the most complicated person you work with?

    You probably don’t have to think very hard to answer that question. You already know their name, their job title, their quirks, and their flaws. You have firsthand experience with the mental and emotional fallout they leave in their wake. You’ve seen the problems their complexity creates for everyone on their team. You wish you could fix them, solve them, ignore them, or teleport them to a parallel dimension.

    But you can’t.

    You have to work with them.

    (You could quit, but your next job will have a complicated person waiting for you.)

    That means you need effective strategies to collaborate with (nearly) anyone. Especially the picky, prickly, problematic ones.

    Drawing from his global consulting experience with teams and leaders from the glitz of sports and entertainment, to the number-crunching world of finance, to the meticulous realms of insurance, pharma, and manufacturing, Ryan Leak provides proven strategies for…

    * Seeing challenging individuals as human beings to understand rather than problems to solve
    * Detoxing unrealistic expectations and getting comfortable with complicated
    * Learning to communicate effectively in complex environments
    * Embracing healthy disagreement as a tool to discover better solutions
    * Setting boundaries that let people into your world without letting them run your world

    “The process of learning to collaborate with difficult individuals is transformative—it’s a gateway to greater creativity, stronger teams, and increased productivity,” Leak explains. “On the other side of complicated is the wonderful, wide-open world of effective collaboration and a workplace you love.”

  • Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

    John Hope Franklin

    $29.00

    John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5-million-copy bestseller, From Slavery to Freedom. Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not help but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened―once with lynching―and consistently subjected to racism's denigration of his humanity. Yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard; become the first black historian to assume a full professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College; and be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklin's participation was much more fundamental than that.

    From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the President's Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nation's racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshall's preparation for arguing Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race toward humanity and equality, a life long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995. Intimate, at times revelatory, Mirror to America chronicles Franklin's life and this nation's racial transformation in the twentieth century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.

  • The Opportunity: An Age Gap Romance

    T. M Richardson

    $15.99

    For Nadine, a stranger's kiss reignites a dormant flame.

    From the outside looking in, Nadine Davis-Moody has the perfect life. Gorgeous husband. Beautiful children. An amazing job as CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Beneath the facade of a perfect life, Nadine harbors a secret desire she's kept hidden for years. A chance encounter at the one club she never thought she'd go to reignites a forbidden passion she's tried her best to forget. A single stolen kiss with a mysterious dancer sets her world ablaze.

    The unexpected appearance of that same dancer as her son's new nanny throws Nadine's carefully constructed reality into a tailspin. As their connection deepens, Nadine must confront her hidden desires and question what it means to live authentically.

    Can she reconcile her past with her present desires, or will the flames of passion that she's suppressed for so long consume her?

  • The Living Is Easy

    Dorothy West

    $19.95

    An insightful, witty novel set in early twentieth-century black Boston by the Harlem Renaissance's youngest member--reissued for a new generation of readers.

  • Grip (Grip #2)

    Kennedy Ryan

    $15.25

    Resisting an irresistible force wears you down and turns you out.I know.I've been doing it for years.I may not have a musical gift of my own, but I've got a nose for talent and an eye for the extraordinary.And Marlon James - Grip to his fans - is nothing short of extraordinary.Years ago, we strung together a few magical nights, but I keep those memories in a locked drawer and I've thrown away the key.All that's left is friendship and work. He's on the verge of unimaginable fame, all his dreams poised to come true.I manage his career, but I can't seem to manage my heart. It's wild, reckless, disobedient.And it remembers all the things I want to forget.

  • Caribe : A Caribbean Cookbook with History

    Keshia Sakarah

    $45.00
    An incredible journey through the social and culinary history of the Caribbean, with recipes from every nation.

    Caribe is the first cookbook to explore Caribbean food culture of the entire region: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Petite Martinique and the Carriacou, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, The French Caribbean, The Dutch West Indies and Trinidad and Tobago. Through years-long research including collaborations with historians and extensive travel to the islands, food writer and chef Keshia Sakarah explores the complicated and varied stories of each nation through its beloved dishes, addressing difficult truths while at the same time creating a joyful collection of the most celebrated recipes in the region to pay homage to those who created them, from Haitian Independence – Soup Joumou and Dominican Saltfish Accra Fritters, to Guyanese Pepperpot and Montserratian Fish Broth, passed on through generations.

    Including stunning location photography, essays and recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between, Caribe is the ultimate tome of Caribbean cooking.
  • The Best Man: Unfinished Business (The Best Man Series)

    Malcolm D. Lee

    $20.00

    The beloved characters from The Best Man movies and hit television series reunite for a sexy and soulful, heartbreaking and hilarious reckoning of love.

    Recently divorced and fresh off a Pulitzer Prize win, Harper Stewart is in a new era. He’s working on a movie and living the ultimate bachelor life in his Brooklyn penthouse. But still, something is missing. What else explains the stubborn creative block? The carousel of women? And seventh-wheel status with his friends?

    Jordan Armstrong had to flee New York. First, to give herself distance from Harper and, second, to escape the corporate grind. In her beachfront Malibu property, the façade of a “healed” Jordan flourishes. Yet she finds herself unmoored. Despite the physical distance, she still feels Harper’s magnetic pull.

    Meanwhile, in Ghana, Robyn has gone full bohemian restaurateur. She has finally found peace and won’t let another man ruin it—that is, until a handsome local entrepreneur commands her attention. But it’s all too much change for her daughter, Mia, and when she secretly calls Harper with an emergency Robyn would rather hide, their world is shaken and relationships are tested once more.

    Book one of The Best Man trilogy follows Harper, Jordan, and Robyn as they try to establish lives away from the hurts of the past and come to realize that some love is impossible to break. With support from their close-knit crew of chosen family—Quentin, Shelby, Lance, Murch, and Candace—they fight for a future that proves one’s second act can be the extended chapter worth it all.

  • The Racial Contract

    Charles W. Mills

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    The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state.

    As this 25th anniversary edition—featuring a foreword by Tommy Shelbie and a new preface by the author—makes clear, the still-urgent The Racial Contract continues to inspire, provoke, and influence thinking about the intersection of the racist underpinnings of political philosophy.

  • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (Pitt Poetry Series)

    Ross Gay

    Sold out

    Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.

  • The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

    Mehrsa Baradaran

    $32.50

    "[A]ccessible and intellectually rich…Essential reading to understand the economic state of the nation." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

    The celebrated legal scholar and author of The Color of Money reveals how neoliberals rigged American law, creating widespread distrust, inequality, and injustice.

    With the nation lurching from one crisis to the next, many Americans believe that something fundamental has gone wrong. Why aren’t college graduates able to achieve financial security? Why is government completely inept in the face of natural disasters? And why do pundits tell us that the economy is strong even though the majority of Americans can barely make ends meet? In The Quiet Coup, Mehrsa Baradaran, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that the system is in fact rigged toward the powerful, though it wasn’t the work of evil puppet masters behind the curtain. Rather, the rigging was carried out by hundreds of (mostly) law-abiding lawyers, judges, regulators, policy makers, and lobbyists. Adherents of a market-centered doctrine called neoliberalism, these individuals, over the course of decades, worked to transform the nation―and succeeded.

    They did so by changing the law in unseen ways. Tracing this largely unknown history from the late 1960s to the present, Baradaran demonstrates that far from yielding fewer laws and regulations, neoliberalism has in fact always meant more―and more complex―laws. Those laws have uniformly benefited the wealthy. From the work of a young Alan Greenspan in creating "Black Capitalism," to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s efforts to unshackle big money donors, to the establishment of the "Law and Economics" approach to legal interpretation―in which judges render opinions based on the principles of right-wing economics―Baradaran narrates the key moments in the slow-moving coup that was, and is, neoliberalism. Shifting our focus away from presidents and national policy, she tells the story of how this nation’s laws came to favor the few against the many, threatening the integrity of the market and the state.

    Some have claimed that the neoliberal era is behind us. Baradaran shows that such thinking is misguided. Neoliberalism is a failed economic idea―it doesn’t, in fact, create more wealth or more freedom. But it has been successful nevertheless, by seizing the courts and enabling our age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality. An original account of the forces that have brought us to this dangerous moment in American history, The Quiet Coup reshapes our understanding of the recent past and lights a path toward a better future.

  • Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Stahlecker Selections)

    Tommye Blount

    $16.95

    In his debut collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man’s late-night encounter with a police officer—the titular “man in blue”—becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: “It’s a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love I’m too ashamed to want for myself.” In “Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum,” the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an “infant’s small mouth” as well as the “sad calculator” that was “built to subtract from and divide a town.” In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the “other” and locates us squarely within these personae.

  • Badass Bonita: Break the Silence, Become a Revolution, Unearth Your Inner Guerrera

    Kim Guerra

    $29.00

    From the creator of Brown Badass Bonita comes a “powerful and necessary guide toward self-discovery and metamorphosis” (Dr. Mariel Buqué) that can help transform not only your life but the lives of everyone in your community.
     
    Almost every Latina has heard the phrase calladita te ves más bonita—you look most beautiful when you are silent. It's a message rooted in machismo passed from generation to generation, and one that poet and Latine therapist, Kim Guerra, grew up on.

    In Badass Bonita, Guerra tells a story of coming into her own power, and guides readers through the process of finding their own. Rejecting what she was taught as a girl, she learned to use her voice and the more she listened to that inner niña, the more she unearthed her inner guerrera. Vowing never to be calladita again, she now teaches Latine women to find their voices, healing the stories and emotional wounds that have kept them silent.
     
    Tackling tough conversations around machismo, mental health, trauma, and intersectional identities, Badass Bonita is a guide that will help readers:
    * Understand underlying sources of wounds and trauma,
    * Shift from self‑silencing and into revolutionary self‑love,
    * Build confidence and bring positive change to relationships, family and community.

    Lyrical and accessible, written in Kim’s signature poetic, Spanglish style, Badass Bonita is perfect for readers of My Grandmother's Hands and Este dolor no es mío, — for mothers, daughters, therapists, and mujeres poderosas everywhere ready find their wings.

  • When Devils Sing: Deluxe Edition

    Xan Kaur

    $21.99

    This deluxe edition is printed with stenciled edges!

    In this Southern gothic horror novel, four unlikely allies in a small town investigate a local teen's disappearance, and what they discover festering at the core of their community is far more sinister and ancient than they could’ve ever imagined. For fans of She is a Haunting, True Detective, Mexican Gothic, and Midsommar.

    When Dawson Sumter goes missing, all he leaves behind is a smattering of blood in room 4 of the debt-ridden motel owned by Neera Singh's family. Disappearances like this aren't uncommon in the rural Georgia town of Carrion, especially every thirteen years when a periodical cicada brood returns from underground, shrieking their deafening screams.

    For Neera, Dawson is another reminder that in this corner of the South, the rich only get richer, and the poor―well, nothing good comes their way.

    Neera sets out to investigate Dawson’s whereabouts―if he even still lives―along with three other teens: Isaiah, son of a prominent judge and clandestine true crime podcaster; Reid, son of the wealthiest man in the region; and Sam, estranged daughter of the local hitman. As they find themselves entangled in a messy web of secrets and lies, they discover the riches of the adjacent Lake Clearwater community may have a terrifying source of power dating back to the town’s founding and an ancient urban legend about three devils, each more sinister than the next. How deep does the rot go, and can they find a way to escape its reach?

  • Standing at the Scratch Line: A Novel (Strivers Row)

    Guy Johnson

    $19.00

    Raised in the steamy bayous of New Orleans in the early 1900s, LeRoi "King" Tremain, caught up in his family's ongoing feud with the rival DuMont family, learns to fight. But when the teenage King mistakenly kills two white deputies during a botched raid on the DuMonts, the Tremains' fear of reprisal forces King to flee Louisiana.

    King thus embarks on an adventure that first takes him to France, where he fights in World War I as a member of the segregated 369th Battalion—in the bigoted army he finds himself locked in combat with American soldiers as well as with Germans. When he returns to America, he battles the Mob in Jazz Age Harlem, the KKK in Louisiana, and crooked politicians trying to destroy a black township in Oklahoma.

    King Tremain is driven by two principal forces: He wants to be treated with respect, and he wants to create a family dynasty much like the one he left behind in Louisiana. This is a stunning debut by novelist Guy Johnson that provides a true depiction of the lives of African-Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century.

  • W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction (LOA #350): An Essay Toward a History of the Part whichBlack Folk Played in the Attempt to ReconstructDemocracy in America, 1860–1880 (Library of America, 350)

    W.E.B. Du Bois

    $45.00

    A definitive edition of the landmark book that forever changed our understanding of the Civil War’s aftermath and the legacy of racism in America

    Upon publication in 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois’s now classic Black Reconstruction offered a revelatory new assessment of Reconstruction—and of American democracy itself. One of the towering African American thinkers and activists of the twentieth century, Du Bois brought all his intellectual powers to bear on the nation’s post-Civil War era of political reorganization, a time when African American progress was met with a white supremacist backlash and ultimately yielded to the consolidation of the unjust social order of Jim Crow.

    Black Reconstruction is a pioneering work of revisionist scholarship that, in the wake of the censorship of Du Bois’s characterization of Reconstruction by the Encyclopedia Britannica, was written to debunk influential historians whose racist ideas and emphases had disfigured the historical record. “The chief witness in Reconstruction, the emancipated slave himself,” Du Bois argued, “has been almost barred from court. His written Reconstruction record has been largely destroyed and nearly always neglected.” In setting the record straight Du Bois produced what co-editor Eric Foner has called an “indispensable book,” a magisterial work of detached scholarship that is also imbued with passionate outrage.

    Presented in a handsome and authoritative hardcover edition prepared by Foner and co-editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black Reconstruction is joined here for the first time with important writings that trace Du Bois’s thinking throughout his career about Reconstruction and its centrality in understanding the tortured course of democracy in America.

  • The Vegetarian

    Han Kang

    $18.00

    Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. 
     
    Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

    A Best Book of the Year: BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Time, Elle, The Economist, HuffPost, Slate, Bustle, The St. Louis Dispatch, Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly

  • From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

    Jacqueline Woodson

    $8.99

    A Coretta Scott King Honor Book

    Three-time Newbery Honor author Jacqueline Woodson explores race and sexuality through the eyes of a compelling narrator

    Melanin Sun has a lot to say. But sometimes it's hard to speak his mind, so he fills up notebooks with his thoughts instead. He writes about his mom a lot--they're about as close as they can be, because they have no other family. So when she suddenly tells him she's gay, his world is turned upside down. And if that weren't hard enough for him to accept, her girlfriend is white. Melanin Sun is angry and scared. How can his mom do this to him-- is this the end of their closeness? What will his friends think? And can he let her girlfriend be part of their family?

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