All Books
- Purple Hibiscus (A Novel)
Purple Hibiscus (A Novel)
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Sold outFifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.
As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.
Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom. - The Wretched of the Earth
The Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon
$18.00First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Translated by Richard Philcox, and featuring now-classic critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as a new essay, this sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
- An Unkindness of Ghosts
An Unkindness of Ghosts
by Rivers Solomon
$15.95*ships in 7-10 business days*
Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world.
Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.
- Ring Shout
Ring Shout
by P. Djèlí Clark
from $17.99IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world? - Josefina's Habichuelas / Las habichuelas de Josefina
Josefina's Habichuelas / Las habichuelas de Josefina
by Jasminne Mendez
$18.95*ships in 7 -10 business days*
Like all kids, Josefina loves to eat sweets. She loves warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, cupcakes and candy! One night, while eating a piece of flan, Mami asks her to consider giving up sweets for Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter. "That's impossible!" Josefina says. When Mami promises to teach her how to make her favorite dessert, habichuelas con dulce, she agrees to give it a try.
Josefina can't wait to end her fast and eat the delicious sweet cream beans, her family's traditional Easter dessert. While she and her mom, tías and abuela prepare the dish, they dance to merengue music and tell stories about life back in the Dominican Republic. The kitchen fills with the aromatic smells of cinnamon and sugar, but it's the feelings of love and happiness Josefina will never forget. On Easter Sunday, when the family eats the special dessert she prepared, the girl's grandmother proclaims, "It's the best pot of habichuelas con dulce I've tasted in my life!"
This heart-warming, bilingual picture book for children shares a universal story all kids can relate to-learning about one's culture through food, music and family stories-while focusing on a cultural tradition specific to the Dominican Republic. As a bonus, the book includes the recipe for this special dessert-in both English and Spanish! - Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e
Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e
by Jasminne Mendez
$16.95The daughter of Dominican immigrants, Méndez marshals pathos and outrage to depict the ironic circumstances of her life as she begins to disconnect from her overly protective parents. But tragic illness—she was diagnosed with scleroderma at 22 and lupus just six years later—and unexpected twists of fate not only bring her closer to her Latino cultural roots, her doting mother and strict father, but also drive her to transform pain and disappointment into art. Méndez’s incisive self-analysis takes her creativity from an obscure, dark place into full resplendent bloom.
In this stirring collection of personal essays and poetry, Méndez shares her story, writing about encounters with the medical establishment, experiences as an Afro Latina and longing for the life she expected but that eludes her. - The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health
The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health
by Rheeda Walker
Sold outWe can’t deny it any longer: there is a Black mental health crisis in our world today. Black people die at disproportionately high rates due to chronic illness, suffer from poverty, under-education, and the effects of racism. This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today’s world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care.
In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist and African American mental health expert Rheeda Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, how to combat stigma, spot potential mental illness, how to practice emotional wellness, and how to get the best care possible in system steeped in racial bias.
This breakthrough book will help you:
- Recognize mental and emotional health problems
- Understand the myriad ways in which these problems impact overall health and quality of life and relationships
- Develop psychological tools to neutralize ongoing stressors and live more fully
- Navigate a mental health care system that is unequal
It’s past time to take Black mental health seriously. Whether you suffer yourself, have a loved one who needs help, or are a mental health professional working with the Black community, this book is an essential and much-needed resource.
- Binti: The Complete Trilogy
Binti: The Complete Trilogy
by Nnedi Okorafor
$20.00Includes a brand-new Binti story!
Collected for the first time in a trade paperback omnibus edition, the Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning Binti trilogy, the story of one extraordinary girl's journey from her home to distant Oomza University.
In her Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella, Nnedi Okorafor introduced us to Binti, a young Himba girl with the chance of a lifetime: to attend the prestigious Oomza University. Despite her family's concerns, Binti's talent for mathematics and her aptitude with astrolabes make her a prime candidate to undertake this interstellar journey.
But everything changes when the jellyfish-like Medusae attack Binti's spaceship, leaving her the only survivor. Now, Binti must fend for herself, alone on a ship full of the beings who murdered her crew, with five days until she reaches her destination.
There is more to the history of the Medusae—and their war with the Khoush—than first meets the eye. If Binti is to survive this voyage and save the inhabitants of the unsuspecting planet that houses Oomza Uni, it will take all of her knowledge and talents to broker the peace.
But even if Binti achieves this remarkable feat, it's not the end of her story. For this lone Himba woman, now bonded with a Medusa and forever changed by this bond, still must find a way to survive and thrive at Oomza University amid swirling interspecies biases. And eventually, she must return home to test the strength of the fragile peace she worked so hard to win.
Collected now for the first time in omnibus form—and introducing a new Binti story—follow Binti's journey in this groundbreaking sci-fi trilogy. - Filthy Animals
Filthy Animals
by Brandon Taylor
from $16.00*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*
In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.
One of the breakout literary stars of 2020, Brandon Taylor has been hailed by Roxane Gay as “a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways.” With Filthy Animals he renews and expands on the promise made in Real Life, training his precise and unsentimental gaze on the tensions among friends and family, lovers and others. Psychologically taut and quietly devastating, Filthy Animals is a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it. - African Artists: From 1882 to Now
African Artists: From 1882 to Now
edited by Phaidon Editors, Joseph L. Underwood, & Chika Okeke-Agulu
$69.95*Ships in 7-10 business days*
A groundbreaking A-Z survey of the work of over 300 modern and contemporary artists born or based in Africa
Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art.
- Noor
Noor
by Nnedi Okorafor
from $18.00*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt…natural, and that’s putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was “wrong”. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the “reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist” and the “saga of the wicked woman and mad man” unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn’t so predictable. Expect the unaccepted. - Black Slaves, Indian Masters
Black Slaves, Indian Masters
by Barbara Krauthamer
$34.95From the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians bought, sold, and owned Africans and African Americans as slaves, a fact that persisted after the tribes' removal from the Deep South to Indian Territory. Through the end of the nineteenth century, ongoing conflicts among Choctaw, Chickasaw, and U.S. lawmakers left untold numbers of former slaves and their descendants in the two Indian nations without citizenship in either the Indian nations or the United States. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara Krauthamer rewrites the history of southern slavery, emancipation, race, and citizenship to reveal the centrality of Native American slaveholders and the black people they enslaved.
Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South
From the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians bought, sold, and owned Africans and African Americans as slaves, a fact that persisted after the tribes' removal from the Deep South to Indian Territory. The tribes formulated racial and gender ideologies that justified this practice and marginalized free black people in the Indian nations well after the Civil War and slavery had ended. Through the end of the nineteenth century, ongoing conflicts among Choctaw, Chickasaw, and U.S. lawmakers left untold numbers of former slaves and their descendants in the two Indian nations without citizenship in either the Indian nations or the United States. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara Krauthamer rewrites the history of southern slavery, emancipation, race, and citizenship to reveal the centrality of Native American slaveholders and the black people they enslaved.
Krauthamer's examination of slavery and emancipation highlights the ways Indian women's gender roles changed with the arrival of slavery and changed again after emancipation and reveals complex dynamics of race that shaped the lives o - In Courage Journal
In Courage Journal
by Alexandra Elle
$14.95*ships in 7 - 10 business days*
An encouraging guide to cultivating self-love, courage, and joy from Alexandra Elle, a celebrated leader in self-care.
Greet each day with confidence and positivity with In Courage Journal, a daily writing practice to help you set intentions, find strength, and learn self-love. Celebrated self-care author Alexandra Elle presents simple morning and evening journaling prompts, creative writing exercises, and inspiring mantras to help you process your emotions and show up in the world with courage and clarity. Delivered in a shimmery package with luminous details, and brimming with Elle's signature warmth and wisdom, this encouraging journal is an invaluable companion for anyone interested in self-care, mindfulness, and personal transformation.
• BELOVED AUTHOR: Alexandra Elle is a celebrated leader in the wellness world. She hosts online courses on writing and self-care for her large following, and travels the country giving workshops on wellness, empowerment, and courage. She is the author of After the Rain and the host of the Hey, Girl podcast, where she features interviews and stories from female writers, wellness experts, artists, and more.
• BEAUTIFUL TO DISPLAY: With a luminous cover, shimmering flourishes, and a ribbon marker, this package is both practical and gorgeous, making it an uplifting gift or self-purchase for anyone who needs a little encouragement or inspiration and a beautiful accessory to display.
• EASY TO USE: With simple prompts to complete each morning and evening, this inviting journal makes it easy to process emotions, set intentions, and practice self-care in everyday life.
• VALUABLE CONTENT: Touching on themes of stress, anxiety, and burnout, this book offers compassion and encouragement for all of life's difficult moments and provides valuable wellness practices, including gratitude exercises, empowering mantras, and affirmations.
Perfect for:
• Fans of Alexandra Elle
• Self-care enthusiasts and mindfulness seekers
• Anyone in search of techniques to reduce stress and anxiety - Ty's Travels: All Aboard! by Kelly Starling Lyons
Ty's Travels: All Aboard! by Kelly Starling Lyons
$5.99Join Ty on his imaginative adventures in Ty's Travels, a new My First I Can Read series with rhythmic text by Kelly Starling Lyons and with joyful art by Nina Mata.
Ty wishes his family would play with him, but everyone is too busy before dinnertime. Luckily, Ty knows just what to do. . . . Time for fun! Celebrate the power of imagination in All Aboard!
With simple, rhythmic text and joyful, bright art, this My First series is perfect for the beginning reader.
- New World Sourdough
New World Sourdough
by Bryan Ford
$27.99*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*New World Sourdough teaches handmade artisan bread baking for beginner to intermediate home bakers who want to learn how to bake fermented breads at home with New World twists.Learn how to make a sourdough starter, basic breads, as well as other innovative baked goods from start to finish with Bryan Ford, Instagram star (@artisanbryan) and host of The Artisan’s Kitchen on Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network. With less emphasis on perfecting crumb structure or obsessive temperature monitoring, Bryan focuses on the tips and techniques he’s developed in his own practice, inspired by his Honduran roots and New Orleans upbringing, to ensure your success and a good return on your time and effort.
- One Crazy Summer
One Crazy Summer
by Rita Williams-Garcia
Sold out*Ships in 7-10 business day*
Rita Williams-Garcia’s Newbery Honor Book, Coretta Scott King Award winner, and New York Times bestseller One Crazy Summer tells the moving story of three sisters who travel to turbulent Oakland, California, in 1968 in search of the mother who abandoned them.
Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. And even though Delphine must look after her sisters during a summer trip to California to visit Cecile. When they arrive on the West Coast, their mother decides that they will attend a day camp run by the Black Panthers. Unexpectedly, the three sisters learn much about their family, their country, and themselves.
Acclaimed author Rita Williams-Garcia writes with insight and humor about family and identity in this brilliant, award-winning middle grade novel. This book won the Coretta Scott King Award and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and was a Newbery Honor Book and a National Book Award Finalist.
EXTRAS will include a portion of Rita Williams-Garcia's Coretta Scott King Award acceptance speech, a deleted chapter, and more! - The Black Presidency
The Black Presidency
by Michael Eric Dyson
$16.99*ships in 7-10 business days*
Michael Eric Dyson dives deep into the true meaning of Barack Obama’s historic presidency and its effects on the changing landscape of race and blackness in America. How has race shaped Obama’s identity, career, and presidency? What can we learn from his major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?
Dyson was granted an exclusive interview with the president for this book, and Obama’s own voice shines through. Along with interviews with Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and others, this intimate access provides a unique depth to this engrossing analysis of the nation’s first black president, and how race shapes and will shape our understanding of his achievements and failures alike. - Glow
Glow
by Ruth Forman
$8.99A joyfully poetic board book that delivers an ode to the beautiful light of African American boys.
I shine night too
smooth brown
glow skin
This simple, playful, and elegant board book stars a young boy who joyfully celebrates his dark skin with a bright moon at the end of a perfect day. - The Story of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Story of Martin Luther King Jr.
by Johnny Ray Moore
Sold out*Ships in 7-10 business days*
Teach little learners about beloved civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. with this 200-word board book.
This little book introduces Martin Luther King Jr., an iconic leader of the civil rights movement. Simple, toddler-friendly text tells how King grew up, how he became a minister, and how he worked to end segregation in America. Accessible for even the youngest of children, The Story of Martin Luther King Jr. helps readers understand who King is, what he did, and why his story still matters today. - An ABC of Equality
An ABC of Equality
by Chana Ginelle Ewing
Sold outALL people have the right to be treated fairly, no matter who they are, what they look like or where they come from. This is called equality. An ABC of Equality introduces complicated concepts to the youngest of children.
A is for Ability, B is for Belief, C is for Class. The best-selling book An ABC of Equality introduces complicated concepts surrounding social justice to the youngest of children.
All people have the right to be treated fairly, no matter who they are, what they look like, or where they come from. From A to Z, simple explanations accompanied by engaging artwork teach children about the world we live in and how to navigate our way through it.
Each right-hand page includes a brightly decorated letter with the word it stands for and an encouraging slogan. On the left, a colorful illustration and bite-size text sum up the concept. Cheerful people from a range of backgrounds, ethnicities, and abilities lead the way through the alphabet.- L is for LGBTQIA. Find the words that make you, you.
- N is for No. No means no.
- P is for Privilege. Be aware of your advantages.
- X is for Xenophobia. Ask questions and you’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Celebrate your Differences, ask more Questions, share your Kindness, and learn to Understand the world.
- Ten Black Dots Board Book
Ten Black Dots Board Book
by Donald Crews
$9.99The perennial bestseller by the two-time Caldecott Honor artist is available in a board book format for the first time. What can you do with ten black dots? First published in 1968, Donald Crews’s bestselling classic is now a board book and just the right size and shape for its ideal audience—the very curious youngest readers. Ten Black Dots is a counting book, a book of simple rhymes, and a book of everyday objects. It’s a preschool masterpiece by the creator of such award winners as Freight Train and Truck.
- Truck Board Book
Truck Board Book
Donald Crews
$9.99Truck is written and illustrated by the celebrated creator of Freight Train, Bigmama's, School Bus, and many other classic and award-winning picture books for young children. Truck was named a Caldecott Honor Book by the American Library Association and was also named an ALA Notable Book for Children. It is an ideal book to share with preschoolers, both at home and in the classroom—especially those who love books about transportation!
In this wordless picture book, a large, bright red trailer truck packed with tricycles moves through pages of fog, truck stops, and crowded highways. "Beautifully executed and appealing."—School Library Journal
- Working the Roots
Working the Roots
by Michelle Elizabeth Lee
$29.00"Working The Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing" is an engaging study of the traditional healing arts that have sustained African Americans across the Atlantic ocean for four centuries down through today. Complete with photographs and illustrations, a medicines, remedies, and hoodoo section, interviews and stories.
- Of One Blood
Of One Blood
by Pauline Hopkins
$14.99When Reuel Briggs, a medical student at Harvard, witnesses the performance of the beautiful singer Dianthe Lusk at a concert, he's infatuated by her talent and beauty. That next morning, Reuel is called to treat the victims of a train accident. Among them is Dianthe, seemingly dead, but he revives her using a form of mesmerism.
Reuel falls in love with her and proposes marriage. Wanting to provide for his fiancee, he undertakes a dangerous but lucrative archaeological expedition to Ethiopia, where he discovers more than treasure. Now his special abilities begin to make sense as he learns the truth about his ancestors.
- On the Come Up
On the Come Up
by Angie Thomas
Sold outThis is the highly anticipated second novel by Angie Thomas, the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning The Hate U Give.
Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shut off notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.
On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’s homage to hip hop, the art that sparked her passion for storytelling and continues to inspire her to this day. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are, and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working class black families.
Brilliant, insightful, full of heart, this novel is another modern classic from one of the most influential literary voices of a generation.
- The Color of Water
The Color of Water
by James McBride
$16.00*Ships in 7-10 business days*
In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned.
At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college—and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University.
Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.
This book was recently reprinted with a new cover. You may receive one of the two covers shown. - Red at the Bone
Red at the Bone
by Jacqueline Woodson
$17.00An extraordinary novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.
Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson’s extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own ceremony—a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives—even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be. - Let Me Hear a Rhyme
Let Me Hear a Rhyme
Tiffany Jackson
Sold outIn the next striking and vibrant standalone novel by the critically acclaimed author of Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming, Tiffany D. Jackson tells the story of three Brooklyn teens who plot to turn their murdered friend into a major rap star by pretending he is still alive.Biggie Smalls was right. Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean that Quadir and Jarrell are okay letting their best friend Steph’s tracks lie forgotten in his bedroom after he’s killed—not when his beats could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a celebration, not after years of having each other’s backs.
Enlisting the help of Steph’s younger sister, Jasmine, Quadir and Jarrell come up with a plan to promote Steph’s music under a new rap name: The Architect. Soon, everyone in Brooklyn is dancing to Steph’s voice. But then his mixtape catches the attention of a hotheaded music rep and—with just hours on the clock—the trio must race to prove Steph’s talent from beyond the grave.
Now, as the pressure—and danger—of keeping their secret grows, Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are forced to confront the truth about what happened to Steph. Only each has something to hide. And with everything riding on Steph’s fame, together they need to decide what they stand for before they lose everything they’ve worked so hard to hold on to—including each other.
- Hurricanes
Hurricanes
by Rick Ross
$17.99The highly anticipated memoir from hip-hop icon Rick Ross chronicles his coming of age amid Miami’s crack epidemic, his star-studded controversies and his unstoppable rise to fame.
Rick Ross is an indomitable presence in the music industry, but few people know his full story. Now, for the first time, Ross offers a vivid, dramatic and unexpectedly candid account of his early childhood, his tumultuous adolescence and his dramatic ascendancy in the world of hip-hop.
Born William Leonard Roberts II, Ross grew up “across the bridge,” in a Miami at odds with the glitzy nightclubs and yachts of South Beach. In the aftermath of the 1980 race riots, he came of age at the height of the city’s crack epidemic. All the while he honed his musical talent, overcoming setback after setback until a song called “Hustlin’” changed his life forever.
From his first major label deal to the controversies, health scares, arrests and feuds he had to transcend along the way, Hurricanes is a revealing portrait of one of the biggest stars in the rap game and an intimate look at the birth of an artist. - African American Folk Healing
African American Folk Healing
by Mireille Miller-Young
$34.00Cure a nosebleed by holding a silver quarter on the back of the neck. Treat an earache with sweet oil drops. Wear plant roots to keep from catching colds. Within many African American families, these kinds of practices continue today, woven into the fabric of black culture, often communicated through women. Such folk practices shape the concepts about healing that are diffused throughout African American communities and are expressed in myriad ways, from faith healing to making a mojo.
Stephanie Y. Mitchem presents a fascinating study of African American healing. She sheds light on a variety of folk practices and traces their development from the time of slavery through the Great Migrations. She explores how they have continued into the present and their relationship with alternative medicines. Through conversations with black Americans, she demonstrates how herbs, charms, and rituals continue folk healing performances. Mitchem shows that these practices are not simply about healing; they are linked to expressions of faith, delineating aspects of a holistic epistemology and pointing to disjunctures between African American views of wellness and illness and those of the culture of institutional medicine. - Discourse on Colonialism
Discourse on Colonialism
by Aimé Césaire
$16.00"Césaire's essay stands as an important document in the development of
third world consciousness--a process in which [he] played a prominent
role."
--Library Journal
This classic work, first
published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of
scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in
Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later,
when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism
inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and
anti-war movements and has sold more than 75,000 copies to date.
Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and
colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the
contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of "progress"
and "civilization" upon encountering the "savage," "uncultured," or
"primitive." Here, Césaire reaffirms African values, identity, and
culture, and their relevance, reminding us that "the relationship
between consciousness and reality are extremely complex. . . . It is
equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same
time that we decolonize society." An interview with Césaire by the poet
René Depestre is also included. - The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
from $18.95The Book of Harlan opens with the courtship of Harlan's parents and his 1917 birth in Macon, Georgia. After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move to Harlem, where he eventually becomes a professional musician. When Harlan and his best friend, trumpeter Lizard Robbins, are invited to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre--affectionately referred to as "The Harlem of Paris" by black American musicians--Harlan jumps at the opportunity, convincing Lizard to join him.
But after the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald--the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany--irreparably changing the course of Harlan's life. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden's mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden's familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.
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