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  • The Way Champs Play

    by Naomi Osaka

    $19.99

    In a rhythmic celebration of sport and play, four-time Grand Slam champion and tennis superstar Naomi Osaka shares key steps to becoming a true champ, including being kind, working as a team, doing your best, and most importantly, having fun.

    At Play Academy,

    We love to move.

    That’s why we play.

    We are champs and we play all day!

    Inspired by Osaka’s game-changing program Play Academy, which instills confidence in and provides resources to young girls through sports, The Way Champs Play is an exciting and inspiring anthem for all kids in and out of the classroom who want to PLAY ALL DAY!

    Use this book to:

    • Discuss different types of sports.
    • Talk with children about good sports(wo)manship.
    • Encourage kids to engage in sport and play for their overall health and happiness.

    And more!

    Get inspired, get active, and go play with this unique anthem, perfect for classrooms and story time anytime!

  • How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance

    by Akiba Solomon & Kenrya Rankin

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    This celebration of Black resistance, from protests to art to sermons to joy, offers a blueprint for the fight for freedom and justice -- and ideas for how each of us can contribute

    Many of us are facing unprecedented attacks on our democracy, our privacy, and our hard-won civil rights. If you're Black in the US, this is not new. As Colorlines editors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin show, Black Americans subvert and resist life-threatening forces as a matter of course. In these pages, leading organizers, artists, journalists, comedians, and filmmakers offer wisdom on how they fight White supremacy. It's a must-read for anyone new to resistance work, and for the next generation of leaders building a better future.

    Featuring contributions from:

    • Ta-Nehisi Coates
    • Tarana Burke
    • Harry Belafonte
    • Adrienne Maree brown
    • Alicia Garza
    • Patrisse Khan-Cullors
    • Reverend Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
    • Kiese Laymon
    • Jamilah Lemieux
    • Robin DG Kelley
    • Damon Young
    • Michael Arceneaux
    • Hanif Abdurraqib
    • Dr. Yaba Blay
    • Diamond Stingily
    • Amanda Seales
    • Imani Perry
    • Denene Millner
    • Kierna Mayo
    • John Jennings
    • Dr. Joy Harden Bradford
    • Tongo Eisen-Martin
  • Let's Celebrate Juneteenth Board Book

    by Tonya Abari

    $9.99

    A celebration of Juneteenth for babies and toddlers!

    Let's Celebrate Juneteenth Board Book from Mudpuppy is a wonderful introduction to Juneteenth, a federal holiday in the United States on June 19th commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Colorful illustrations show various ways people celebrate the anniversary of freedom for all!

    • Celebratory Message – This book introduces young children to this important commemorative holiday and opens the door to understanding that not everyone was or is free.
    • Bright and Bold Artwork – Bright and colorful illustrations on 26 pages will make this a happy and rewarding experience for toddlers to experience and understand inclusion.
    • Perfect Size - Small 7” x 7” board book is just the size for little hands.
    • Great Gift Idea – This board book makes a wonderful gift for birthdays and special occasions all year through.
  • Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

    by Henry Louis Jr Gates

    $20.00
    A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, by the bestselling author of The Black Church.

    The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.

    Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age.

    The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored "home rule" to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation.

    An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.
  • Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems

    by James Baldwin

    $16.00
    All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition
     
    During his lifetime (1924–1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next TimeGiovanni’s Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain, brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer. However, Baldwin’s earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy’s Blues, never achieved the popularity of his novels and nonfiction, and is the one and only book to fall out of print.

    This new collection presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy’s Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed and which was in production at the time of his death. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays. The poems range from the extended dramatic narratives of “Staggerlee wonders” and “Gypsy” to the lyrical beauty of “Some days,” which has been set to music and interpreted by such acclaimed artists as Audra McDonald. Nikky Finney’s introductory essay reveals the importance, relevance, and rich rewards of these little-known works. Baldwin’s many devotees will find much to celebrate in these pages.
  • House Woman

    by Adorah Nworah

    $28.00

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    When Ikemefuna is put on a plane from Lagos, Nigeria to Sugar Land, Texas, she anticipates her newly arranged All-American life: a handsome husband, a beautiful red-brick mansion, pizza parlors, and dance classes.

    Desperate to please, she'll happily cater to her family's needs. But Ikemefuna soon discovers what it actually means to live with her in-laws. Demands for a grandson grow urgent as her every move comes under scrutiny. As Ikemefuna finds there’s no way out, her new husband grapples with the influence of his parents against his own increasing affection for her.

    As family secrets boil to the surface, Ikemefuna must decide how to scrape herself out of an impossibly sticky situation: a marriage succumbing to generational cycles of pain and silence. In the end, she may be carrying the greatest secret of all. 

    An unforgettably delicious thriller, House Woman is about a woman trapped in a dangerous web of conflicting desires, melting in the Texas heat. 

  • We Are Owed. by Ariana Brown
    $20.00

    We Are Owed. is the debut poetry collection of Ariana Brown, exploring Black relationality in Mexican and Mexican American spaces. Through poems about the author's childhood in Texas and a trip to Mexico as an adult, Brown interrogates the accepted origin stories of Mexican identity. We Are Owed asks the reader to develop a Black consciousness by rejecting U.S., Chicano, and Mexican nationalism and confronting anti-Black erasure and empire-building. As Brown searches for other Black kin in the same spaces through which she moves, her experiences of Blackness are placed in conversation with the histories of formerly enslaved Africans in Texas and Mexico. Esteban Dorantes, Gaspar Yanga, and the author's Black family members and friends populate the book as a protective and guiding force, building the "we" evoked in the title and linking Brown to all other African-descended peoples living in what Saidiya Hartman calls "the afterlife of slavery.

  • An Illicit Seduction: a Dark Erotic Experience (Taboo & Voodoo #1)

    by Chencia Higgins

    $12.00
    "I can't even see straight until I've had my face in between your legs."After a night of heavy drinking with her coworkers, Seraph succumbs to an erotic dream in where she receives pleasure beyond her wildest imagination. It's a brand of filthy that she enjoys but something about it is simultaneously wrong, though she can't put her finger on why. What she does know is that she can't deny how good it feels and isn't sure she wants it to stop.When she awakens mid-climax, she comes face to face with a nightmare that she can't escape. At every turn he's there, and he won't take no for an answer. As she is relentlessly pursued, her defenses crumble until she has no fight left in her-just as he intended.
  • Not So Perfect Strangers

    by L.S. Stratton

    $16.99

    Tasha Jenkins has tried—and failed—to leave her abusive husband. But a chance encounter with a white woman fleeing her own angry husband entangles the lives of two strangers from very different worlds.


    Tasha and Madison want to help each other out of their marriages. But they have very different ideas of what that means . . .


    The women are on a collision course that will end in the case files of the DC homicide unit. Unraveling the truth may be impossible . . . but what has the truth ever done for women like Tasha and Madison?

  • Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies

    by Andrea Ritchie & Alexis Pauline Gumbs

    $22.00

    An exploration of how emergent strategies can help us meet this moment, survive what is to come, and shape safer and more just futures.

    Practicing New Worlds
     explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.

    Drawing on decades of experience as an abolitionist organizer, policy advocate, and litigator in movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice and the principles articulated by adrienne maree brown in 
    Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Ritchie invites us to think beyond traditional legislative and policy change to create more possibilities for survival and resistance in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism—and the cataclysms to come. Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the-ground organizers resisting state violence, building networks to support people in need of abortion care, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being. 

  • Loving in the War Years: And Other Writings, 1978-1998

    by Cherríe Moraga

    $18.95

    An 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. 

  • I am the Most Dangerous Thing

    by Candace Williams

    $17.95

    Over the course of these poems, the Black, queer protagonist begins to erase violent structures and fill the white spaces with her hard-won wisdom and love. I am the Most Dangerous Thing doesn't just use poetry to comment on life and history. The book is a comment on writing itself. What have words done? When does writing become a form of disengagement, or worse, violence?

    The book is an exercise in paring the state down to its true logic of violence and imagining what can happen next. There are many contradictions—Although the protagonist teaches the same science that was used to justify enslavement and a racial caste system, she knows she will die at the hands of science and denies the state the last word by penning her own death certificate. As an educator and knowledge worker, she is an overseer of the same racist, misogynistic, and homophobic systems that terrorize her. Yet, she musters the courage to kill Kurtz, a primordial vision of white terror. She is Black and queer and fat and angry and chill and witty and joyful and depressed and lovely and flawed and an (im)perfect dagger to the heart of white supremacist capitalism.

  • The Book of Light: Anniversary Edition

    by Lucille Clifton

    $22.00

    With a powerful introduction by Ross Gay and a moving afterword by Sidney Clifton, this special anniversary edition of The Book of Light offers new meditations and insights on one of the most beloved voices of the 20th century.

    Though The Book of Light opens with thirty-nine names for light, we soon learn the most meaningful name is Lucille—daughter, mother, proud Black woman. Known for her ability to convey multitudes in few words, Clifton writes into the shadows—her father’s violations, a Black neighborhood bombed, death, loss—all while illuminating the full spectrum of human emotion: grief and celebration, anger and joy, empowerment and so much grace. 

    A meeting place of myth and the Divine, The Book of Light exists “between starshine and clay” as Clifton’s personas allow us to bear the world’s weight with Atlas and witness conversations between Lucifer and God. While names and dates mark this text as a social commentary responding to her time, it is haunting how easily this collection serves as a political palimpsest of today. We leave these poems inspired—Clifton shows us Superman is not our hero. Our hero is the Black female narrator who decides to live. And what a life she creates! “Won’t you celebrate with me?”
  • The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due
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    In her first new book in seven years, Tananarive Due further cements her status as a leading innovator in Black horror and Afrofuturism

    “Tananarive Due is the master of Black horror, even teaching a class where Jordan Peele guest-lectured. So her new collection, The Wishing Pool, out in mid-April, is a major treat, full of major scares. Due excels at twist endings but also brilliantly creates an atmosphere of creeping dread in which you know something terrible is coming. The Wishing Pool is helpfully divided into four sections, and each feels like a movement in a symphony. There are classic tales of horror, then a series of stories set in a Florida town where the swamp tends to swallow people up; the final two sections shift to science fiction about post-apocalyptic futures. (These last sections include pandemic stories, written before 2020, which hit harder now.) Due shows just how much territory she can cover in one short book and just how versatile terrifying tales can be.”
    Washington Post

    American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due’s second collection of stories includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense—all genres she wields masterfully. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic to the reaches of the far future, Due’s stories all share a sense of dread and fear balanced with heart and hope.

    In some of these stories, the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal. All are written with Due’s trademark attention to detail and deeply drawn characters.

    In addition to previously published work, this collection contains brand-new stories, including “Rumpus Room,” a supernatural horror novelette set in Florida about a woman’s struggle against both outer and inner demons.

  • I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive

    by Zora Neale Hurston

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    A collection of essays, fiction, journalism, folklore, and autobiography, preserving the legacy of one of the Harlem Renaissance’s greatest writers.

    The foundational, classic anthology that revived interest in the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God—"one of the greatest writers of our time"—and made her work widely available for a new generation of readers (Toni Morrison).

    During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston was praised for her writing but condemned for her independence and audacity. Her work fell into obscurity until the 1970s, when Alice Walker rediscovered Hurston's unmarked grave and anthologized her writing in this groundbreaking collection for the Feminist Press. 

    I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive established Hurston as an intellectual leader for future generations of black writers. A testament to the power and breadth of Hurston's oeuvre, this edition—newly reissued for the Feminist Press's fiftieth anniversary—features a new preface by Walker.

    "Through Hurston, the soul of the black South gained one of its most articulate interpreters." —The New York Times

  • Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto

    by Clarkisha Kent

    $19.95

    Ships in 7-10 business days

    In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity.

    There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental health issues and intergenerational trauma, at times Kent’s body felt like a cosmic punishment. In the face of body dysmorphia, homophobia, anti-Blackness, and respectability politics, the pursuit of “high self-esteem” seemed oxymoronic. 

    Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is a humorous, at times tragic, memoir that follows Kent on her journey to realizing that her body is a gift to be grown into, that sometimes family doesn’t always mean home, and how even ill-fated bisexual romances could free her from gender essentialism. Perfect for readers of Keah Brown’s The Pretty One, Alida Nugent’s You Don’t Have to Like Me, and Stephanie Yeboah’s Fattily Ever After, Kent’s debut explores her own lived experiences to illuminate how fatphobia intertwines with other oppressions. It stresses the importance of addressing the violence scored upon our minds and our bodies, and how we might begin the difficult—but joyful—work of setting ourselves free.

  • The Little Mermaid: Make A Splash

    by Ashley Franklin

    $17.99

    Explore under the sea and beyond with Ariel in the new picture book retelling of Disney's live action The Little Mermaid!

    Ariel is a curious mermaid who has always wanted to explore the human world! After saving a prince named Eric from a dangerous shipwreck, Ariel makes a deal with the Sea Witch, Ursula, so she can meet him and learn more about what life is like beyond her ocean home. But Ursula is full of tricks, and it will take all of Ariel’s courage to save the human world and the ocean from the Sea Witch’s devious plans.

    If you like this book, you may also want to consider adding these Disney books to your collection: 

    • The Little Mermaid: Adventures on Land
    • World of Reading: The Little Mermaid: Meet Ariel
    • The Little Mermaid: Guide to Merfolk
  • I Am Debra Lee: A Memoir

    by Debra Lee

    from $18.99

    A riveting memoir by the former CEO of Black Entertainment Television (BET), about the glamorous and ugly moments of being a high-powered Black woman executive in the entertainment industry.

    As an incredible glass-ceiling breaker and the woman who brought timeless television shows like The Game and Being Mary Jane to cable, Debra Lee has been the visionary responsible for elevating Black images and storytelling for decades. Now she’s telling her own story, in an intimate and eye-opening tale about the triumphant and tricky moments of a career in entertainment.

    I Am Debra Lee is a page-turner, filled with deeply personal revelations, juicy celebrity intel, and electrifying behind-the-scenes stories that reveal how she went from a girl raised in the segregated South to leading the first Black company traded on the New York Stock Exchange and how she juggled social responsibility while managing a company targeted toward the Black community. In a rousing narrative, Lee writes: “I don’t just love Black culture—the magic in our hair, the swagger in our steps, the particular way we can say ‘alright now’ to fit our changing moods—Black culture saved me.” In her exciting debut, she answers all of our questions about building an unapologetically Black enterprise as a Black woman. What to do when you’re forced to attend a board meeting eight weeks after a C-section. How to manage a team of men when you’re the first female CEO at the company. How she learned the hard way to say no to those in power when their vision didn’t align with her purpose.

    I Am Debra Lee tackles lessons that women CEOs rarely dare to. She addresses her personal struggles with motherhood and “having it all,” navigating reproductive choice, fertility, and #MeToo while achieving great professional success. Being Black and a woman in corporate life isn’t easy for anyone. But Lee shows how she evolved from a shy girl who dreaded public speaking to becoming a force to be reckoned with as she helped build the leading entertainment company for Black audiences and consumers of Black culture globally.

  • The Faithless

    by C. L. Clark

    $18.99

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    In the second installment of C.L. Clark's Magic of the Lost trilogy, soldier Touraine and princess Luca must return to Balladaire to reclaim Luca's throne and to face the consequences of dismantling an empire.

    The rebels have won, and the empire is withdrawing from Qazal. But undoing the tangled web that binds the two nations will not be easy, and Touraine and Luca will face their greatest challenge yet.

    Luca needs to oust her uncle from the Balladairan throne once and for all and take her rightful place as Queen. But he won't let go of power so easily. When he calls for a "Trial of Competence" and Luca's allies start disappearing from her side, she will need to find a way to prove her might. And she knows someone who can help...

    Touraine has found a home in the newly free country of Qazal. But she soon realizes that leading a country and leading a revolution are two very different tasks. And, even more importantly, if Luca's uncle doesn't ratify the treaty, the Qazali could end up right back where they started. 

    Together, the two women will have to come overcome their enemies, their history, and their heartbreak in order to find a way to secure Luca's power and Touraine's freedom. 

  • The Unbroken

    by C. L. Clark

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    On the far outreaches of a crumbling desert empire, two women--a princess and a soldier--will haggle over the price of a nation in this richly imagined, breath-taking sapphic epic fantasy filled with rebellion, espionage, and assassinations.
     
    Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.
     
    Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet's edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.
     
    Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren't for sale.

    "A perfect military fantasy: brutal, complex, human and impossible to put down." - Tasha Suri, author of Empire of Sand

  • The Killing Moon

    by N. K. Jemisin

    $18.99

    Assassin priests, mad kings, and the goddess of death collide in the first book of the Dreamblood Duology by NYT bestselling and three time Hugo-Award winning author N. K. Jemisin.

    The city burned beneath the Dreaming Moon.

    In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers -- the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.

    But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, Ehiru -- the most famous of the city's Gatherers -- must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill -- or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.

  • Simon B. Rhymin' Gets in the Game

    by Dwayne Reed

    from $8.99

    The humorous and heartwarming third book in the Simon B. Rhymin' series, by America's favorite rapping teacher from Chicago, will have readers bopping along to the beat as Simon joins the community basketball team.

    When eleven-year-old Simon Barnes joins the basketball team, he’s so excited to be part of a neighborhood tradition. But when he shoots an AIR BALL, Simon knows he needs reinforcements. He recruits his best friend C.J. to the team and it's finally looking like the Creighton Park Panthers have a shot at breaking their four-season losing streak—until some of the other players abandon them for a better team. Now Simon isn't sure the Panthers will ever have a chance at winning. 

    But with the help of his friends, a pep rally featuring epic beats, and some Creighton Park pride, maybe the team can finally prove they have what it takes not simply to win, but to be a part of something that matters.

    READ MORE ABOUT SIMON AND HIS CREW:
    Simon B. Rhymin'
    Simon B. Rhymin' Takes a Stand

  • Rosewater: A Novel

    Liv Little

    $17.00

    For fans of Queenie and Such a Fun Age comes a deliciously gritty and strikingly bold debut novel about discovering love where it has always been.

    Elsie is a sexy, funny, and fiercely independent woman in south London. But, at just 28, she is also tired. Though she spends her days writing tender poetry in her journal, her nights are spent working long hours for minimum wage at a neighborhood dive bar. Not even sleeping with her alluring coworker, Bea, can quell her existential dread. The difficulty of being estranged from her family, struggle of being continually rejected from jobs, and fear of never making money doing what she loves is too great. But Elsie is determined to keep the faith, for a little longer at least. Things will surely turn around. They have to.

    But when Elsie is suddenly evicted from her social housing, her fragile foundations threaten to collapse entirely. With nowhere left to go, Elsie turns to her childhood friend, Juliet, for help.

    Among Juliet’s mismatched cushions and shelves lined with trinkets, Elsie is able to breathe for the first time in years. But between their reruns of Drag Race and nights smoking on the balcony, something else soon begins to glimmer in Elsie’s heart . . . Sometimes what you’ve been searching for has been there all along. Can Elsie see it in time?

    Featuring the incredible poetry of Kai-Isaiah Jamal, Rosewater is a story of intergenerational love, healing, and one woman’s journey home. A remarkable debut by an exciting new talent, readers are sure to be enchanted by Liv Little’s distinctive and captivating contemporary voice.

  • The Age of Phillis

    by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

    $16.95
    Poems imagine the life and times of Phillis Wheatley Peters

    NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work for Poetry
    2020 National Book Award for Poetry, Longlist
    2020 LA Times Book Award Finalist

    In 1773, a young, African American woman named Phillis Wheatley Peters published a book of poetry that challenged Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, and her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters. Woven throughout are poems about Wheatley's "age"—the era that encompassed political, philosophical, and religious upheaval, as well as the transatlantic slave trade. For the first time in verse, Wheatley's relationship to black people and their individual "mercies" is foregrounded, and here we see her as not simply a racial or literary symbol, but a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history.

    mothering #1
    Yaay, Someplace in the Gambia, c. 1753

    after
    the after-birth
    is delivered
    the mother stops
    holding her breath
    the mid-wife gives
    what came before
    her just-washed pain
    her insanity pain
    an undeserved pain
    a God-given pain
    oh oh oh pain
    drum-talking pain
    witnessing pain
    Allah
    a mother offers
    You this gift
    prays You find
    it acceptable
    her living pain
    her creature pain
    her pretty-little-baby
    pain
  • Ethic

    by Ashley Antoninette

    $15.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Ethic has power, but love is evasive. After ordering the hit that mistakenly killed the love of his life, Ethic is haunted. Focused on being a better man, he is raising three children, one of which is a defiant teenaged girl, Morgan. When Morgan finds herself in a vulnerable position, Ethic is pulled back into the game where he was once king.

  • Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation

    by adrienne maree brown

    Sold out

    Life skills for liberation.

    In our complex world, facilitation and mediation skills are as important for individuals as they are for organizations. How do we practice them in ways that align with nature, with pleasure, with our best imagining of our future? How do we attend to generating the ease necessary to help us move through the inevitable struggles of life? How do we practice the art of holding others without losing ourselves? Black feminists have answers to those questions that can serve anyone working to create changes in our world, changes great and small; individually, interpersonally, and within our organizations.

    Holding Change is about attending to coordination, to conflict, to being humans in right relationship with each other, not as a constant ongoing state, but rather as a magnificent, mysterious, ever-evolving dynamic in which we must involve ourselves, shape ourselves and each other. The majority of the book is sourced from brown’s twenty-plus years of facilitation and mediation work with movement groups.

    Includes contributions by Autumn Brown, Sage Crump, Malkia Devich-Cyril, Ejeris Dixon, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill, Micky ScottBey Jones, N’Tanya Lee, and Makani Themba

  • The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin
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    Ships/ready for pick-up in 7-10 business days
    In the final book of NYT bestselling and three time Hugo-Award winning author N. K. Jemisin's Dreamblood Duology, a priestess and an exiled prince must join together to free the city of dreams from imperial rule.

    Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares: a mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up -- but Gujaareh has known peace for too long.

    Someone must show them the way.

    Hope lies with two outcasts: the first woman ever allowed to join the dream goddess' priesthood and an exiled prince who longs to reclaim his birthright. Together, they must resist the Kisuati occupation and uncover the source of the killing dreams. . . before Gujaareh is lost forever.

  • Allegedly

    Tiffany Jackson

    $15.99

    Mary B. Addison killed a baby.

    Allegedly. She didn’t say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: a white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official.

    Mary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. The house isn’t really “home”—no place where you fear for your life can be considered a home. Home is Ted, who she meets on assignment at a nursing home.

    There wasn’t a point to setting the record straight before, but now she’s got Ted—and their unborn child—to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary must find the voice to fight her past. And her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her momma. No one knows the real Momma. But does anyone know the real Mary?

  • These Ghosts are Family

    by Maisy Card

    $17.00
    Stanford Solomon’s shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley.

    And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

    These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the houseboy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.
  • The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds
    $19.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Just when seventeen-year-old Matt thinks he can’t handle one more piece of terrible news, he meets a girl who’s dealt with a lot more—and who just might be able to clue him in on how to rise up when life keeps knocking him down—in this “vivid, satisfying, and ultimately upbeat tale of grief, redemption, and grace” (Kirkus Reviews) from the Coretta Scott King – John Steptoe Award–winning author of When I Was the Greatest.

    Matt wears a black suit every day. No, not because his mom died—although she did, and it sucks. But he wears the suit for his gig at the local funeral home, which pays way better than the Cluck Bucket, and he needs the income since his dad can’t handle the bills (or anything, really) on his own. So while Dad’s snagging bottles of whiskey, Matt’s snagging fifteen bucks an hour. Not bad. But everything else? Not good. Then Matt meets Lovey. Crazy name, and she’s been through more crazy stuff than he can imagine. Yet Lovey never cries. She’s tough. Really tough. Tough in the way Matt wishes he could be. Which is maybe why he’s drawn to her, and definitely why he can’t seem to shake her. Because there’s nothing more hopeful than finding a person who understands your loneliness—and who can maybe even help take it away.
  • Love

    by Toni Morrison

    $16.00
    In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.
  • Jazz

    by Toni Morrison

    $16.00
    From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.

    “As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.” —Glamour

    In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This novel “transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious” (People).

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