All Books

Availability

Price

$
$

More filters

  • A Family Meal: A Novel

    by Bryan Washington

    $18.00

    From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.

    Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?

    When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.

  • Omar Ba

    Omar Ba

    Sold out

    Ba’s densely textured paintings intertwine African and European histories to explore the corrupting effects of wealth and power and their impacts on communities

    This is the first monograph on Dakar- and New York–based mixed-media painter Omar Ba (born 1977), whose surreal scenes of violence and fantasy draw from a wide and often dark portfolio of themes: despotic warlords of the present, traditional folklore, colonial oppression and the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. His most abiding theme is the experiences of Black communities, both within America and across the globe. Ba articulates all these narrative threads through a densely textured visual language, applying oil, gouache, crayon and India ink onto rough, readymade surfaces such as corrugated cardboard. After preparing uniform backgrounds rendered in black paint, Ba populates the scenes with an abundance of fantastical beings—part human, part animal or plant.

  • Zora Books Her Happy Ever After: A Rom-Com Novel

    by Taj McCoy

    Sold out

    An Indie bookstore owner finds herself in a love triangle when she meets the author she's had a crush on for years...and his best friend.

    Zora has committed every inch of her life to establishing her thriving DC bookstore, making it into a pillar of the community, and she just hasn’t had time for romance. But when a mystery author she’s been crushing on for years agrees to have an event at her store, she starts to rethink her priorities. Lawrence is every bit as charming as she imagined, even if his understanding of his own books seems just a bit shallow. When he asks her out after his reading, she’s almost elated enough to forget about the grumpy guy who sat next to her making snide comments all evening. Apparently the grouch is Lawrence’s best friend, Reid, but she can’t imagine what kind of friendship that must be. They couldn’t be more different.

    But as she starts seeing Lawrence, and spending more and more time with Reid, Zora finds first impressions can be deceiving. Reid is smart and thoughtful. And interested. After years of avoiding dating, she suddenly has two handsome men competing for her affection. But even as she struggles to choose between them, she can’t shake the feeling that they’re both hiding something. A mystery she’s determined to solve before she can find her HEA.

  • We Are a Haunting: A Novel

    by Tyriek White

    $18.00

    A poignant debut for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Jamel Brinkley, We Are a Haunting follows three generations of a working class family and their inherited ghosts: a story of hope and transformation. 

    In 1980’s Brooklyn, Key is enchanted with her world, glowing with her dreams. A charming and tender doula serving the Black women of her East New York neighborhood, she lives, like her mother, among the departed and learns to speak to and for them. Her untimely death leaves behind her mother Audrey, who is on the verge of losing the public housing apartment they once shared. Colly, Key’s grieving son, soon learns that he too has inherited this sacred gift and begins to slip into the liminal space between the living and the dead on his journey to self-realization.

    In the present, an expulsion from school forces Colly across town where, feeling increasingly detached and disenchanted with the condition of his community, he begins to realize that he must, ultimately, be accountable to the place he is from. After college, having forged an understanding of friendship, kinship, community, and how to foster love in places where it seems impossible, Colly returns to East New York to work toward addressing structural neglect and the crumbling blocks of New York City public housing he was born to; discovering a collective path forward from the wreckages of the past. A supernatural family saga, a searing social critique, and a lyrical and potent account of displaced lives, We Are a Haunting unravels the threads connecting the past, present, and future, and depicts the palpable, breathing essence of the neglected corridors of a pulsing city with pathos and poise.

  • Not Everyone is Going to Like You: Thoughts From a Former People Pleaser

    by Rinny Perkins

    $17.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    A debut illustrated manifesto by Rinny Perkins (@RinnyRiot) about what she's learned as a queer Black woman through the art of self-validation.

    In this graphic collection of mini essays, comedian Rinny Perkins illustrates her experiences as the owner of a popular online shop while she figures out antidepressant prescriptions and the seemingly never-ending dating-app cycle.
     
    Rinny shares what she's learned across topics like mental health, work, sex and dating, and family and friends. Featuring funny, real reflections from experiences in her hometown of (Third Ward!) Houston, Texas to Los Angeles — the author traces her journey to understanding that whether through a friendship break-up or saving up for a Telfar bag, the only person who can truly validate us is ourselves.
     
    With 1970s-inspired graphics like a "When To Quit Your Job" checklist and Microaggressions Bingo, Not Everyone's Going to Like You is a long DM of affirmations from Rinny to herself on how to get through life. Her advice? Stop ignoring your intuition, ignore perfection, and leave them on read.

  • Kehinde Wiley: The Archaeology of Silence

    edited by Claudia Schmuckli

    Sold out

    “That is the archaeology I am unearthing: the specter of police violence and state control over the bodies of young Black and brown people all over the world.” –Kehinde Wiley

    Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence features a new body of paintings and sculptures by American artist Kehinde Wiley confronting the legacies of colonialism through the visual language of the fallen figure. It expands on a subject the artist first explored in his 2008 series Down—a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men inspired by Wiley’s encounter with Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22) at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Holbein’s painting triggered an ongoing investigation into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art that Wiley traced across religious, mythological and historical subjects. An Archaeology of Silence extends these considerations to include men and women around the world whose senseless deaths, often unacknowledged or silenced, are transformed into a powerful elegy of global resistance against state-sanctioned violence. The resulting paintings of Black bodies struck down, wounded or dead, all referencing iconic historical paintings of slain heroes, martyrs or saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and brown bodies through the lens of European art history.
    Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) is a world-renowned visual artist. Working in the mediums of painting, sculpture and video, Wiley is best known for his vibrant portrayals of contemporary African American and African-diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. Wiley became the first African American artist to paint an official US Presidential portrait for former US President Barack Obama. Wiley has held solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, and his works are included in the collections of over 40 public institutions worldwide. He lives and works in Beijing, Dakar and New York.

  • Chef Edna: Queen of Southern Cooking, Edna Lewis

    by Melvina Noel

    Sold out

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    A warm and inviting picture-book portrait of African American culinary legend Edna Lewis, who brought Southern cooking to the masses

    Edna loved to cook. Growing up on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, she learned the value of fresh, local, seasonal food from her Mama Daisy, how to measure ingredients for biscuits using coins, and to listen closely to her cakes to know when they were done. Edna carried these traditions with her all the way to New York, where she became a celebrated chef, who could even turn traditional French food into her signature Southern style. The author of several cookbooks and the recipient of numerous awards, Chef Edna introduced the world to the flavors of her home.

  • The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories

    by Nella Larsen

    $27.00

    A Contemporary Classics hardcover omnibus of the complete fiction of one of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including her most famous novel, Passing

    Throughout her short but brilliant literary career, Nella Larsen wrote piercing dramas about the Black middle class that featured sensitive, spirited heroines struggling to find a place where they belonged. Passing, Larsen’s best-known work, is a disturbing story about the unraveling lives of two childhood friends, one of whom turns her back on her past and marries a white racist. Just as disquieting is the portrait in Quicksand of biracial Helga Crane, who is unable to escape her loneliness no matter where and with whom she lives. Race and marriage offer few securities here or in the other stories in this compulsively readable collection, rich in psychological complexity and imbued with a vibrant sense of place.

    Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

  • Symphony of Secrets: A novel

    by Brendan Slocumb

    $28.00

    Ships in 7-10 business days

    A gripping page-turner from the celebrated author of book club favorite The Violin Conspiracy: Music professor Bern Hendricks discovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time—his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed. Determined to uncover the truth that a powerful organization wants to keep hidden, Bern will stop at nothing to right history's wrongs and give Josephine the recognition she deserves.

    Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world’s preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, Bern knows everything there is to know about the man behind the music. When Mallory Roberts, a board member of the distinguished Delaney Foundation and direct descendant of the man himself, asks for Bern’s help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, RED, he jumps at the chance. With the help of his tech-savvy acquaintance Eboni, Bern soon discovers that the truth is far more complicated than history would have them believe.

    In 1920s Manhattan, Josephine Reed is living on the streets and frequenting jazz clubs when she meets the struggling musician Fred Delaney. But where young Delaney struggles, Josephine soars. She’s a natural prodigy who hears beautiful music in the sounds of the world around her. With Josephine as his silent partner, Delaney’s career takes off—but who is the real genius here?

    In the present day, Bern and Eboni begin to uncover more clues that indicate Delaney may have had help in composing his most successful work. Armed with more questions than answers and caught in the crosshairs of a powerful organization who will stop at nothing to keep their secret hidden, Bern and Eboni will move heaven and earth in their dogged quest to right history’s wrongs.

  • My Week with Him

    by Joya Goffney

    $19.99

     *All pre-orders are signed/personalized and come with exclusive art and bookmarks.*

     From Joya Goffney, author of Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry, comes her third stunning YA novel, a stirring coming-of-age, best friends-to-lovers romance about a girl named Nikki who plans to run away from small-town Texas but ultimately finds that her oldest friend, Mal, just might be the one who’s been there for her all along. Filled with Joya’s signature heart and humor, this book captures complex family dynamics, friendship, and love. For fans of I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest and Counting Down with You by Tashie Bhuiyan.

    After a painful betrayal by her sister and a heated argument with their mother, Nikki is kicked out and finds herself homeless over spring break, only two months away from graduation. But instead of relying on anyone, especially someone like Malachai and his rich, overeager, overgenerous parents, to give her a home, and instead of waiting for her dad who isn't actually her birth-dad to talk some sense into her heartless mother again, she decides to jet. She'll drive as far as her car will take her, so long as it's away from that woman. 

    When Malachai catches wind of her plan to flee Texas, he begs her to stay the remainder of spring break with him at his parent-free house. He believes that over the course of a week, he can either convince her to stay in Cactus, Texas, or at least help her come up with a solution that ends with her graduating. All the while, she's dead set on heading to California at the end of the week to get started on her dream music career, no matter how impractical it is. But all their spring break plans are interrupted when Nikki's sister goes missing. Running away isn't something Vae does—it's always been Nikki's thing. 

    Nikki is forced to work alongside her wretched mother, her mother's ex-husband, and Malachai, who may or may not be moving into the boyfriend slot, to find her little sister, all with the uncertainty of what will happen at the end of the week. Will Nikki find a way to stay in Cactus, or will this spring break be the last time she ever sees these people?


  • The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa

    by Stephen Buoro

    $28.00

    *ships in 7-10 business days

    Crackling with energy and intelligence, this debut is the "smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking" (Kamila Shamsie) story of an exceptional teenager coming of age in the shadow of colonialism and communal violence in Nigeria.

    Andrew Aziza is an unusually smart fifteen-year-old in Kontagora, Nigeria. He lives with his fiercely protective mother, Gloria, and fantasizes obsessively about white girls-especially blondes. When he's not in church, at school, or hanging about town with his droogs wishing to become one of “Africa's first superheroes,” he's contemplating the larger questions with his teacher Zahrah and his equally brilliant friend Fatima, a Hausa-Fulani girl who has feelings for him. Together they discuss mathematical theorems, Black power, and what Andy has deemed the Curse of Africa.


    Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed Andy Africa soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on: Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man there claims, despite his mother's denials, to be Andy's father, and an anti-Christian mob has gathered, headed for the church. In the ensuing havoc and its aftermath, Andy is forced to reckon with his identity and desires and determine how to live on the so-called Cursed Continent.

    The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzlingly unique literary voice. Crackling with energy, this tragicomic novel provides a stunning lens into contemporary African life, the complicity of the West, and the impossible challenges of growing up in a turbulent world.

  • Naming Ceremony

    by Seina Wedlick

    Sold out

    A sweet sibling story all about making family traditions your own—perfect for fans of Alma and How She Got Her Name and Welcome to the Party

    Today’s the day! It’s Baby Sister’s naming ceremony, and big sister Amira could not be more excited. She has the perfect name picked out . . . or, at least, she hopes it’s the perfect name.

    One by one, friends and family arrive. As Amira greets them, she asks what name they have brought to give to Baby Sister. Each is more beautiful than the last—ShakiraAkahanaUhwe. And each has its own special meaning—thankfulred flowermoonlight. Amira knows that Baby Sister will love these names. But will she love the name Amira has chosen? Is it special enough?

    A story about rich traditions and the unique bond between sisters, Naming Ceremony celebrates multigenerational family and Black joy.

  • The Blue Is Where God Lives: A Novel by Sharon Sochil Washington
    $27.00

    A powerful work of Afro-magic realism that interrogates the legacy of slavery and roots of poverty, witnesses the beauty and power in survival, and asks whether belief, magic, and intention can forge new realities

    Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, is dying a horrific death. Thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by an 18-month stillness. More than a century before, Blue’s grandparents, Amanda and Palmer, attend a salon party in New Orleans. It’s a veritable array of who’s-who within pre–Civil War social circles. Conversations get heated quickly as Ismay, the hostess who hails from French royalty, antagonizes Palmer, a landowner whose parents had been sold into American slavery and who’s there to seek revenge, and Amanda, a shapeshifter and puzzlemaker who had been enslaved until this very gathering. At this party, Amanda learns of a plot that will doom a line of her—and Palmer’s—family to poverty. She devises her own counter-plot to undo the damage.

    Meanwhile, Blue comes out of her stillness, broke and devoid of inspiration. In profound grief and consumed by guilt, Blue travels to The Ranch where the voices grow louder and she has visions of two women from the distant past. As time collapses and Blue and Amanda meet in the space of possibility, Blue feels the spark of a power and creative energy she has only glimpsed. A novel of invention but grounded in the real, The Blue Is Where God Lives is a dual-timeline, time-bending novel of undeniable beauty, magic, and possibility.

  • Where Is Africa: Volume 1

    edited by Anita N. Bateman and Emanuel Admassu

    $35.00

    A multidisciplinary illustrated reader unpacking imperialist representations of Africa by promoting dialogue, memory and everyday practice, and reimagining cultural institutions and the arts—from museums to academia, from architecture to art.

    In 2017, curator and art historian Anita N. Bateman and architect and professor Emanuel Admassu initiated research on the traditional positioning and mispositioning of the arts across the African continent. Where Is Africa has been an extended set of exchanges with contemporary artists, curators, designers and academics who are actively engaged in representing the continent—both within and outside its geographic boundaries. By examining artist collectives, new currents in art history and the rise of contemporary art festivals in and about Africa from the past 10 years, the project unpacks the imperialist foundations of cultural institutions and their anthropological fascination with African objects, people and places.

    The interviews in Where Is Africa examine African and African-diasporic identities and spaces through questions of positionality in relation to specific disciplinary, cultural and political contexts. The texts address Afro-diasporic aesthetic practices and the curatorial, museological and artistic matrices that confront epistemologies of dominance and exclusion. The commissioned essays and images offer concise methodologies that expand or complicate issues addressed by the interviewees.

    Where Is Africa is a conceptual project that accompanies a conceptual place, driven by the desire to dislodge Africa from categorical fixity and the representational logics of nation-states. Africa can never be fully enclosed by the residue of colonial violence or the totalitarian gaze of neoliberalism; instead, it creates infinite malleability, where place and concept are untethered from each other.

    Contributors include: Mikael Awake, Salome Asega, Tau Tavengwa, Anthony Bogues, Jay Simple, Eric Gottesman, Rebecca Corey, Aida Mulkozi, Rakeb Sile, Mesai Haileleul, Mpho Matsipa, Naiama Safia Sandy, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Rehema Chachage, Robel Temesgen, Valerie Amani, Meskerem Assegued, Elias Sime, Olalekan Jeyifous, Amanda Williams, Germane Barnes and Mario Gooden.

  • Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life

    by Tavia Nyong'o

    $30.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    In Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life, cultural critic and historian Tavia Nyong’o surveys the conditions of contemporary black artistic production in the era of post-blackness. Moving fluidly between the insurgent art of the 1960’s and the intersectional activism of the present day, Afro-Fabulations challenges genealogies of blackness that ignore its creative capacity to exceed conditions of traumatic loss, social death, and archival erasure.

    If black survival in an anti-black world often feels like a race against time, Afro-Fabulations looks to the modes of memory and imagination through which a queer and black polytemporality is invented and sustained. Moving past the antirelational debates in queer theory, Nyong’o posits queerness as “angular sociality,” drawing upon queer of color critique in order to name the gate and rhythm of black social life as it moves in and out of step with itself. He takes up a broad range of sites of analysis, from speculative fiction to performance art, from artificial intelligence to Blaxploitation cinema. Reading the archive of violence and trauma against the grain, Afro-Fabulations summons the poetic powers of queer world-making that have always been immanent to the fight and play of black life.

  • The Black Family Reunion Cookbook: Recipes and Food Memories by The National Council of Negro Women
    $17.99
    Inspired by the Black Family Reunion Celebrations, held in seven cities every summer, this book reflects the local, national, and international heritage of the African American community. With first-person reminiscences and recipes from celebrities like Wilma Rudolph, Natalie Cole, Esther Rolle, and Patti LaBelle, this cookbook offers a delightful diversity of over 250 dishes. Line drawings throughout.
  • School Trip: A Graphic Novel

    by Jerry Craft

    Sold out

    Newbery Award–winning graphic novelist Jerry Craft sends Jordan, Drew, and a small group of students from Riverdale Academy on a school trip to Paris in this full-color contemporary graphic novel about friendship, growing up, uncomfortable but necessary conversations, and navigating the world.  A companion to New Kid and Class Act!

    Jordan, Drew, Liam, and a group of other students from Riverdale Academy Day School are finally heading out on their long-awaited school trip to Paris. As an aspiring artist himself, Jordan can’t wait to see all the amazing art in the famous city of lights.

    When their trusted faculty guides are replaced at the last minute, the school trip takes an unexpected—and hilarious—turn. But trying to find their way around a foreign city ends up being almost as tricky as navigating the same friendships, fears, and differences that they struggle with at home.

    Will Jordan and his friends embrace being exposed to a new language, unfamiliar food, and a different culture? Or will they all end up feeling like the “new kid”?

  • Return to Source: Unlock the Power of African-Centered Wellness

    by Araba Ofori-Acquah

    $18.99

    Return To Source invites Black people around the world to reconnect with their lost heritage and find healing, self-love and transformation.

    This book is an empowering call to journey home to a new way of looking after yourself. A new way that is, in fact, the old way.

    Globally, Africans and Diasporans are rediscovering that, even while navigating an oppressive and often unsafe world, we are called to make space for healing, not just for ourselves but also for loved ones, Ancestors and descendants. Our path to liberation includes a commitment to nurturing our personal and community growth by making wellness a priority. In this powerful book, Araba Ofori-Acquah will help you to:

    • embark on a spiritual, emotional and – for some – physical journey back to the Motherland, back to your heritage, back to yourself, back to source

    • unlock your potential with the power of an African-centred approach to wellness

    • incorporate the three seeds of African wellness – music and movement, Mother Earth and magick – into your routine
  • Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?

    by Junauda Petrus

    $18.99

    Based on the viral poem by Coretta Scott King honoree Junauda Petrus, this picture book debut imagines a radically positive future where police aren’t in charge of public safety and community well-being.

    Petrus first published and performed this poem after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. With every subsequent police shooting, it has taken on new urgency, culminating in the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, blocks from Junauda's home.

    In its picture book incarnation, Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? is a joyously radical vision of community-based safety and mutual aid. It is optimistic, provocative, and ultimately centered in fierce love. Debut picture book artist Kristen Uroda has turned Junauda's vision for a city without precincts into a vibrant and flourishing urban landscape filled with wise and loving grandmothers of all sorts.

  • The Sacred Woman Journal: Eighty-Four Days of Reflection and Healing

    by Queen Afua

    $18.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    From the author of the ever-popular and celebrated Sacred Woman: This beautifully-formatted, life-changing, interactive journal welcomes all women to explore a blueprint for healing by connecting their inner vision to daily, actionable steps

    The Sacred Woman Journal is a prompted guide to practicing the principles of Queen Afua’s Sacred Woman and serves as a perfect accompaniment and extension to the enduring classic. Richly expanded from the original self-published edition, The Sacred Woman Journal features:

    • mantras,
    • checklists,
    • meditations, and 
    • prayers to inspire a reader’s journey through twelve healing gateways. 

    Over a twelve-week period, this guided journal provides a tailored canvas of profound possibilities, revelations, visions, and lessons learned, and offers a road map to self-enlightenment designed to not only reset and recharge the body, but to realize the purpose held within the heart and reclaim the full transformative power of the mind and the spirit.
  • House of Cotton: A Novel

    by Monica Brashears

    Sold out

    *ships in 7 -10 business days*

    A stunning, contemporary Black southern gothic novel about what it means to be a poor woman in the God fearing south in the age of OnlyFans, by a breakout new Affrilachian writer, perfect for readers of The Other Black Girl and Luster

    Magnolia Brown is nineteen years old, broke, and effectively an orphan. She feels stuck and haunted: by her overdrawn bank account, her predatory landlord, and the ghost of her late grandmother Mama Brown.

    One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia’s luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home. She accepts. But despite things looking up, Magnolia’s problems fatten along with her wallet. When Cotton’s requests become increasingly weird, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.

    Sharp as a belted knife, this sly social commentary cuts straight to the bone. House of Cotton will keep you mesmerized until the very last page.

  • All I've Wanted All I've Needed

    by A.E. Valdez

    Sold out
    Harlow Shaw feels naïve for believing in happily ever afters but she craves a love that lights her up.

    She thought she had it all with her boyfriend. Until his promising baseball career overshadows their relationship and he asks her a life changing question. It causes her to wonder if what they have is all she ever truly wanted.

    Harlow is yearning for more than the curated life she is living.

    A trip to Bali, a move to Seattle, and an alleged burned cup of coffee lead her to a friendship she didn't know she needed and a love so deep she can feel it in her bones.
  • Colliding with Fate

    by A.E. Valdez

    $25.00

    Kyrell Knight believes life is a game to be played and thoroughly enjoyed. He rarely takes anything seriously, lives in the moment, and indulges in as much pleasure with women as possible. But the sarcasm, money, and women are an attempt to erase the memories of his past as he tries to forget what he came from. It works until his past wants to be a part of his present.

     

    Kyrell reconnects with Quinn Halifax at their mutual best friend's engagement party. They spark up a friendship that quickly turns to flames when it becomes a superficial, no strings attached relationship.

     

    Kyrell is struggling with his past while Quinn is trying to secure her future. Neither is looking for more, but fate has other plans.
    What happens when two people collide with fate?

     

    Content Advisory: child abuse, death, mentions of suicide

  • Want to Start A Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

    by Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard

    $30.00

    *This item will ship or be ready for pick up in 7-10 business days

    Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle

    The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman?

    From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle.

    Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernández, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.

  • Our Fruiting Bodies: Short Fiction

    by Nisi Shawl

    $19.00

    *ships in 7-10 business days

    Our Fruiting Bodies collects stories of old growth and fresh decay, of stubborn rebirth and the faint but nonimaginary paths connecting life and nonlife. From the sharp, sweet confessional of their Peter Pan-inspired “Awfully Big Adventure,” through the melting ambitextualities of “Just Us”—from the early, dizzy-eyed quest at the heart of “Looking for Lilith” through the newly unfurling tendrils that pierce the grounds of “I Being Young and Foolish,” Nisi Shawl’s search for the power of fiction’s truth puts pure, precious gifts right here, right in your hands, ripe and ready for reading. 

  • New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction

    by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl

    $16.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days* 

    New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking—breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery. Like the first New Suns anthology (winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy awards), this book liberates writers of many races to tell us tales no one has ever told.

    Many things come in twos: dualities, binaries, halves, and alternates. Twos are found throughout New Suns 2, in eighteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories revealing daring futures, hidden pasts, and present-day worlds filled with unmapped wonders.

    Including stories by Daniel H. WilsonK. Tempest BradfordDarcie Little BadgerGeetanjali VandemarkJohn ChuNghi VoTananarive DueAlex JenningsKarin LowacheeSaad HossainHiromi GotoMinsoo KangTlotlo TsamaaseRochita Loenen-RuizMalka OlderKathleen AlcaláChristopher Caldwell and Jaymee Goh with a foreword by Walter Mosley and an afterword by Dr. Grace Dillon.

     

  • The Big Letdown

    by Kimberly Seals Allers

    $35.99
    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*
    A fascinating socio-historical look into the hotly contested controversies surrounding breastfeeding.

     

    Pediatricians say you should, but it's ok if you don't. The hospital says “Breast is Best” but sends you home with formula, “just in case.” Your sister-in-law says, “Of course you should!” Your mother says, “I didn't and you turned out just fine.” Celebrities are photographed nursing in public, yet breastfeeding mothers are asked to cover up in malls and in airplanes.? Breastfeeding is a private act yet everyone has an opinion about it. How did feeding our babies get so complicated?

    Kimberly Seals Allers breaks breastfeeding out of the realm of “personal choice” and shows the broader connections to an industrialized food system that begins at birth, the fallout of feminist ideals, and federal policies that are far from family friendly. The Big Letdown uncovers the multi-billion dollar forces battling to replace mothers’ milk and the failure of the medical establishment to protect infant health. Weaving together personal stories with original reporting on medicine, big pharma, hospitals, and research, journalist and infant health advocate Kimberly Seals Allers shows how mothers and babies have been abandoned by all the forces that should be supporting families from the start.

     

  • Racial Justice at Work: Practical Solutions for Systemic Change by Mary Frances Winters & The Winters Group Team
    Sold out
    Creating justice-centered organizations is the next frontier in DEI. This book shows how to go beyond compliance to address harm, share power, and create equity.

    Traditional DEI work has not succeeded at dismantling systems that perpetuate harm and exclude BIPOC groups. Proponents of DEI have put too much focus on HR solutions, such as increasing representation, and not enough emphasis on changing the deeper organizational systems that perpetuate inequities—in other words, on justice. DEIJ work diverges from traditional metrics-driven DEI work and requires a new approach to effectively dismantle power structures.

    This thought-provoking, solutions-oriented book offers strategic advice on how to adopt a justice mindset, anticipate and address resistance, shift power dynamics, and create a psychologically safe organizational culture. Individual chapters provide pragmatic how-to guides to implementing justice-centered practices in recruitment and hiring, data collection and analysis, learning and development, marketing and advertising, procurement, philanthropy, and more.

    DEIJ pioneer Mary-Frances Winters and her coauthors address some of the most significant aspects of adding a justice focus to diversity work, showing how to create a workplace culture where equity is not a checklist of performative actions but a lived reality.
  • A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars

    by Erin Sharkey

    $20.00

    A vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory.

    What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.

    Erin Sharkey considers Benjamin Banneker’s 1795 almanac, as she follows the passing of seasons in an urban garden in Buffalo. Naima Penniman reflects on a statue of Haitian revolutionary François Makandal, within her own pursuit of environmental justice. Ama Codjoe meditates on rain, hair, protest, and freedom via a photo of a young woman during a civil rights demonstration in Alabama. And so on—with wide-ranging contributions from Carolyn Finney, Ronald Greer II, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Sean Hill, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Glynn Pogue, Katie Robinson, and Lauret Savoy—unearthing evidence of the ways Black people’s relationship to the natural world has persevered through colonialism, slavery, state-sponsored violence, and structurally racist policies like Jim Crow and redlining.

    A scrapbook, a family chest, a quilt—and an astounding work of historical engagement and literary accomplishment—A Darker Wilderness is a collection brimming with abundan

  • The Ecstatic

    by Victor LaValle

    $15.95

    *Ships/ready for pick-up in 7-10 business days*

    Anthony James weighs 315 pounds, is possibly schizophrenic, and he’s just been kicked out of college. He’s rescued by his mother, sister, and grandmother, but they may not be altogether sane themselves. Living in the basement of their home in Queens, New York, Anthony is armed with nothing but wicked sarcasm and a few well-cut suits. He intends to make horror movies but takes the jobs he can handle, cleaning homes and factories, and keeps crossing paths with a Japanese political prisoner, a mysterious loan shark named Ishkabibble, and packs of feral dogs. When his invincible 13-year old sister enters yet another beauty pageant—this one for virgins—the combustible Jameses pile into their car and head South for the competition.

    Will Anthony’s family stick together or explode? With electrifying prose, LaValle ushers us into four troubled but very funny lives.

  • Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook

    by Illyanna Maisonet

    $32.50
    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    Illyanna Maisonet spent years documenting her family’s Puerto Rican recipes and preserving the island’s disappearing foodways through rigorous, often bilingual research. In Diasporican, she shares over 90 recipes, some of which were passed down from her grandmother and mother—classics such as Tostones, Pernil, and Arroz con Gandules, as well as Pinchos with BBQ Guava Sauce, Rabbit Fricassee with Chayote, and Flan de Queso.

    In this visual record of Puerto Rican food, ingredients, and techniques, Illyanna traces the island’s flavor traditions to the Taino, Spanish, African, and even United States' cultures that created it. These dishes, shaped by geography, immigration, and colonization, reflect the ingenuity and diversity of their people. Filled with travel and food photography, Diasporican reveals how food connects us to family, history, conflict, and migration.
  • The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart; Arrow of God; No Longer at Ease

    by Chinua Achebe

    $25.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Chinua Achebe is considered the father of modern African literature, the writer who "opened the magic casements of African fiction." The African Trilogy--comprised of Things Fall ApartArrow of God, and No Longer at Ease--is his magnum opus. In these masterly novels, Achebe brilliantly imagines the lives of three generations of an African community as their world is upended by the forces of colonialism from the first arrival of the British to the waning days of empire.

    The trilogy opens with the groundbreaking Things Fall Apart, the tale of Okonkwo, a hero in his village, whose clashes with missionaries--coupled with his own tragic pride--lead to his fall from grace. Arrow of God takes up the ongoing conflict between continuity and change as Ezeulu, the headstrong chief priest, finds his authority is under threat from rivals and colonial functionaries. But he believes himself to be untouchable and is determined to lead his people, even if it is towards their own destruction. Finally, in No Longer at Ease, Okonkwo's grandson, educated in England, returns to a civil-service job in Lagos, only to see his morality erode as he clings to his membership in the ruling elite. 

    Drawing on the traditional Igbo tales of Achebe's youth, The African Trilogy is a literary landmark, a mythic and universal tale of modern Africa. As Toni Morrison wrote, "African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe. For passion, intellect and crystalline prose, he is unsurpassed."

Stay Informed. We're building a community committed to celebrating Black authors + artisans. Subscribe to keep up with all things Kindred Stories.