Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again.

Watch a QuickTime interview with Dinaw Mengestu about this book.

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We’ve lost everything . . . and found ourselves.

Loss pulled Autumn, Shay, and Logan apart. Will music bring them back together?

Autumn always knew exactly who she was: a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan has always turned to writing love songs when his real love life was a little less than perfect.

But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan can’t stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger who’s struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered.

Despite the odds, one band’s music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind.

Catalog Copy: In this all-new novel from the world of Dhonielle Clayton’s sweeping, lush Belles series, rebellious, outspoken, fan-favorite Edel Beauregard enters the Beauty Trials—a deadly competition to find the next Queen of Orléans.

Sophia, the dangerous and erratic former queen, has been imprisoned, restoring peace to Orléans. Now her sister, Charlotte, sits on the throne and has decided to invoke the ancient tradition of the Beauty Trials—a series of harrowing tests meant to find the true ruler of Orléans. Edel, who has always aspired to be more than a Belle, decides to enter and, after promising to bind her arcana to keep from having an unnatural advantage, joins a few dozen other hopefuls intent on becoming the next Queen of Orléans.

But the Trials are far worse than any of them bargained for. As the women are put through tasks that test their strength, confidence, composure, and bravery, many perish, and Edel is mysteriously attacked by one of the other competitors—forcing her to use her powers just to survive. Will her subterfuge cost her the crown, or is there a larger conspiracy at play?

New York Times best-selling author Dhonielle Clayton returns to her sweeping, lush fantasy series with an all-new story teeming with high-stakes court intrigue and danger disguised by beauty.

Now available in paperback! New York Times best-selling author Dhonielle Clayton returns to her sweeping, lush fantasy series, The Belles. Rebellious, outspoken, fan-favorite Edel Beauregard enters the Beauty Trials—a deadly competition to find the next Queen of Orleans. Sophia, the dangerous and erratic former queen, has been imprisoned, restoring peace to Orléans. Now her sister, Charlotte, sits on the throne and has decided to invoke the ancient tradition of the Beauty Trials—a series of harrowing tests meant to find the true ruler of Orléans. Edel, who has always aspired to be more than a Belle, decides to enter and, after promising to bind her arcana to keep from having an unnatural advantage, joins a few dozen other hopefuls intent on becoming the next queen of Orléans. But the Trials are far more dangerous than any of them bargained for. As the women are put through tasks that test their strength, confidence, composure, and bravery, many perish, and Edel is mysteriously attacked by one of the other competitors—forcing her to use her powers just to survive. Will her subterfuge cost her the crown, or is there a larger conspiracy at play? New York Times best-selling author Dhonielle Clayton returns to her sweeping, lush fantasy series with an all-new story teeming with high-stakes court intrigue and danger disguised by beauty.

A gorgeously illustrated deck of cards that helps new and current birdwatchers identify birds in the wild, from wildlife biologist and co-organizer of Black Birders Week, Danielle Belleny.
* Gorgeously Illustrated: Each of the 40 cards in this deck features Michelle Carlos's stunning artwork, accompanied by bite-sized facts about bird's habitats, songs, and physical traits. 
* Deluxe Set: This portable deck is made up of 40 full-color illustrated cards (3 x 5 inches); a four-color, double-sided poster (12 x 15 inches); and, a keepsake magnetic closure box; cards and travel case are embedded in an interior tray. 
* Perfect Gift: This stunning deck is appropriate for beginner birders of all ages and can be taken on your next outdoor expedition or while sitting by your window!

Catalog Copy: *"With wonderfully descriptive language, Clayton builds a grand and lavish world, carefully chipping away at the veneer to reveal its dark, sinister interior... A refreshingly original concept, this substantial fantasy...is an undeniable page-turner." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

A twisted world. A beautiful power.

Camellia Beauregard is a Belle. In the opulent world of Orléans, Belles are revered, for they control Beauty, and Beauty is a commodity coveted above all else. In Orléans, the people are born gray, they are born damned, and only with the help of a Belle and her talents can they transform and be made beautiful.

But it’s not enough for Camellia to be just a Belle. She wants to be the favorite—the Belle chosen by the Queen of Orléans to live in the royal palace, to tend to the royal family and their court, to be recognized as the most talented Belle in the land.

But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favorite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that the very essence of her existence is a lie—that her powers are far greater, and could be more dangerous, than she ever imagined. And when the queen asks Camellia to risk her own life and help the ailing princess by using Belle powers in unintended ways, Camellia now faces an impossible decision.

A collection of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy short fiction selected by award-winning author of Death of the Author and the Binti Trilogy, Nnedi Okorafor, and series editor John Joseph Adams.

The Best American series, launched in 1915, is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction, and it is the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.

Nnedi Okrafor selects twenty pieces that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year and explores the ever-expanding and changing world of science fiction and fantasy today.

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

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

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

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

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

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A classic anthology of short stories by Black writers including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright -- edited and with an introduction by Langston Hughes. 

Originally published in 1967, The Best Short Stories by Black Writers offers a timeless and unforgettable portrait of the tragedy, comedy, triumph, and suffering that were part of African American life from 1899 to 1967. 

Newly Reissued

A man risks his soul and his sanity to save his family from malevolent forces in this brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural, now updated with new material, from the award-winning pioneer of speculative fiction and author of the classic My Soul to Keep. 

When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. 

When Hilton's wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons lurking outside are matched by his internal terrors—macabre nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are these bizarre dreams the dark imaginings of a man losing his hold on sanity—or are they harbingers of terrible events to come? 

As Hilton battles both the sociopath threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves . . . 

Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between is the haunting story of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves as he slowly loses himself. 

"This book is the chronicle of a bright and lively artistic ear that brought the African-American people full into the twentieth century. It is a wonderful book!” ―Amiri Baraka

In his incisive introduction to The Big Sea, an American classic, Arnold Rampersad writes: "This is American writing at its best--simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."

Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet--at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance."

Legendary writer Gayl Jones returns with a stunning new novel about Black American artists in exile

Gayl Jones, the novelist Toni Morrison discovered decades ago and Tayari Jones recently called her favorite writer, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is publishing again. In the wake of her long-awaited fifth novel, Palmares, The Birdcatcher is another singular achievement, a return to the circles of her National Book Award finalist, The Healing.

Set primarily on the island of Ibiza, the story is narrated by the writer Amanda Wordlaw, whose closest friend, a gifted sculptor named Catherine Shuger, is repeatedly institutionalized for trying to kill a husband who never leaves her. The three form a quirky triangle on the white-washed island.

A study in Black women’s creative expression, and the intensity of their relationships, this work from Jones shows off her range and insight into the vicissitudes of all human nature - rewarding longtime fans and bringing her talent to a new generation of readers.

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.

The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality. As the members of the youngest generation watch their mothers and grandmothers pass away, they live with the fear of going mad themselves and must fight to survive.

Crystal Wilkinson offers up Opulence and its people in lush, poetic detail. It is a world of magic, conjuring, signs, and spells, but also of harsh realities that only love―and love that's handed down―can conquer. At once tragic and hopeful, this captivating novel is a story about another time, rendered for our own.

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From ongoing reports of police brutality to the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on Black Americans, 2020 brought a renewed awareness to the deep-rootedness of racism and white supremacy in every facet of American life.

Edited by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, The Black Agenda is the first book of its kind―a bold and urgent move towards social justice through a profound collection of essays featuring Black scholars and experts across economics, education, health, climate, and technology. It speaks to the question "What's next for America?" on the subjects of policy-making, mental health, artificial intelligence, climate movement, the future of work, the LGBTQ community, the criminal legal system, and much more.

Essayists including Dr. Sandy Darity, Dr. Hedwig Lee, Mary Heglar, and Janelle Jones present groundbreaking ideas ranging from Black maternal and infant health to reparations to AI bias to inclusive economic policy, with the potential to uplift and heal not only Black America, but the entire country.

Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is, Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked. Challenging the practices and assumptions of cultural studies, The Black Atlantic also complicates and enriches our understanding of modernism.

Debates about postmodernism have cast an unfashionable pall over questions of historical periodization. Gilroy bucks this trend by arguing that the development of black culture in the Americas arid Europe is a historical experience which can be called modern for a number of clear and specific reasons. For Hegel, the dialectic of master and slave was integral to modernity, and Gilroy considers the implications of this idea for a transatlantic culture. In search of a poetics reflecting the politics and history of this culture, he takes us on a transatlantic tour of the music that, for centuries, has transmitted racial messages and feeling around the world, from the Jubilee Singers in the nineteenth century to Jimi Hendrix to rap. He also explores this internationalism as it is manifested in black writing from the “double consciousness” of W. E. B. Du Bois to the “double vision” of Richard Wright to the compelling voice of Toni Morrison.

In a final tour de force, Gilroy exposes the shared contours of black and Jewish concepts of diaspora in order both to establish a theoretical basis for healing rifts between blacks and Jews in contemporary culture and to further define the central theme of his book: that blacks have shaped a nationalism, if not a nation, within the shared culture of the black Atlantic.

A new edition of the classic New York Times bestseller edited by Toni Morrison, offering an encyclopedic look at the black experience in America from 1619 through the 1940s with the original cover restored.

When Toni Morrison was a senior editor at Random House, she worked with four prominent collectors of black memorabilia to develop this extraordinary “scrapbook” of more than five hundred images detailing the rich cultural and social history of African Americans—from the era of the transatlantic slave trade through the start of the Civil Rights movement. Now, as the nation marks the four hundredth anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival on these shores, The Black Book returns to print in hardcover, featuring the original jacket design.

Charts the Black Catholic attempt to gain independence within the larger Catholic Church

In 1971, a delegation of Black Catholics traveled to the Vatican seeking a meeting with Pope Paul VI. While they did not meet the pope, they informed Vatican officials of the plight of Black Catholics in the United States. They wished to form their own church governance, independent from the White bishops who oversaw their diocese, so that they could exercise governance over their parishes and schools, which were frequently under threat of closure. Their journey was a chapter in a long history of struggle around African American missions and the place of African Americans in the Catholic Church.

The Black Catholic Movement charts the long arc of the movement among Black Catholics to seek independence within the Catholic Church. Influenced by the Black Power Movement’s struggle for self-determination as well as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Black Catholic Movement hoped to establish new ecclesiastical structures that would give them ownership over their church. When American Catholicism proved inflexible to their demands, the break-away Afrocentric Church, Imani Temple, drew thousands of Black Catholics away from Roman Catholicism.

Drawing on interviews and archival research in New Orleans, Detroit, and Washington, DC, the book reconstructs the Black Catholic struggle to maintain distinct Black Catholic communities and to preserve their spiritual, liturgical, and theological heritage. The volume comes up to the present, noting that although allowances have been made for Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church while maintaining their specific Anglican liturgies and traditions, the church has not granted this independence to Black Catholics. The debate about how to navigate unity within the Catholic Church while preserving Black Catholic heritage is still on-going. Ultimately, the book makes the case for the urgency of Black Catholic self-determination and self-governance.

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series.

“Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again

“Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review

From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box,and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America.

For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues.

In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion.

But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

Longlist, National Book Awards 2021 for Nonfiction

A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers

Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomed―marking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb Willis explores the crucial role of photography in (re)telling and shaping African American narratives of the Civil War, pulling from a dynamic visual archive that has largely gone unacknowledged.

With over seventy images, The Black Civil War Soldier contains a huge breadth of primary and archival materials, many of which are rarely reproduced. The photographs are supplemented with handwritten captions, letters, and other personal materials; Willis not only dives into the lives of black Union soldiers, but also includes stories of other African Americans involved with the struggle―from left-behind family members to female spies. Willis thus compiles a captivating memoir of photographs and words and examines them together to address themes of love and longing; responsibility and fear; commitment and patriotism; and―most predominantly―African American resilience.

The Black Civil War Soldier offers a kaleidoscopic yet intimate portrait of the African American experience, from the beginning of the Civil War to 1900. Through her multimedia analysis, Willis acutely pinpoints the importance of African American communities in the development and prosecution of the war. The book shows how photography helped construct a national vision of blackness, war, and bondage, while unearthing the hidden histories of these black Civil War soldiers. In combating the erasure of this often overlooked history, Willis asks how these images might offer a more nuanced memory of African-American participation in the Civil War, and in doing so, points to individual and collective struggles for citizenship and remembrance.

The Black Experience in Design spotlights teaching practices, research, stories, and conversations from a Black/African diasporic lens.

Excluded from traditional design history and educational canons that heavily favor European modernist influences, the work and experiences of Black designers have been systematically overlooked in the profession for decades. However, given the national focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the aftermath of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, educators, practitioners, and students now have the opportunity—as well as the social and political momentum—to make long-term, systemic changes in design education, research, and practice, reclaiming the contributions of Black designers in the process.

*Paperback Release Date - 8/11/26*

The riveting story of the McKissack family—the founders of the leading Black design and construction firm in the United States, from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to its thriving status today—in a moving celebration of resilience and innovation.

Captured in his native West Africa and enslaved on American shores by a North Carolina plantation owner, Moses McKissack I began to build his way to emancipation right from the start. Becoming an enslaved craftsman, he picked up the trade his family would become famous for in the earliest years of the 19th century, passing his learnings down to his children and seeing them off to freedom after the Civil War.

The family would settle in Tennessee, getting its bearings in the building trades despite rampant discrimination, establishing a foothold that now sees its latest generations working at the absolute peak of its industry.

The family’s fingerprints have been left all across the United States, spanning from Reconstruction to contemporary times, through projects like the Morris Memorial Building, Capers C.M.E. Church, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.

Here, Cheryl McKissack Daniel, CEO and president of McKissack & McKissack, reveals the full fascinating story of her family. So much more than an exploration of architectural achievements, The Black Family Who Built America is also a compelling illustration of how history rhymes and reverberates, and a celebration of the human spirit’s ability to overcome adversity and drive change. From Moses’s humble beginnings to Cheryl’s current role as a trailblazer and champion of diversity, the family’s journey underscores the importance of perseverance, innovation, and strategic vision in shaping a legacy that continues to inspire and impact the construction industry.

A cutting-edge collection of the best short stories in contemporary Afrofuturist fiction—from Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker award-winning Black authors

20 mind-blowing, horror-strewn, weird, and woke tales celebrate Black identity, community, and imagination

Black speculative fiction has never been better than it is here and now. On the shoulders of Afrofuturist masters like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany and pioneering visionaries before them, a new, abundant, and brilliant generation of contemporary Black authors, some of them just beginning their careers, is conjuring up a very real renaissance.

Edited by SF-expert andré carrington, and including Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winners alongside emerging and experimental voices, The Black Fantastic showcases the artistry of these breakout literary stars and celebrates the diversity of their talents.

Including Afrofuturist science fiction, weird and fantastic tales, horror and the paranormal, apocalyptic lyricism, time travel, superheroes, and more, here are twenty mindblowing, horror-strewn, weird, woke, nerdy, terrifying, liberating, fantastic, utopian, surreal, genre-defying and empowering short stories, all of them worth reading and rereading now and far into futurity.

Reclaiming histories of racism and oppression and seizing the day, these writers are forging kaleidoscopic new senses of Black identity, community, and imaginative freedom.

In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air – in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.

But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.

Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.

This special, totally singular, nearly uncomp-able book is a LITERARY *and* VISUAL love letter to the role of joy in Black life — giving a full, 360-degree picture of how Black people resist oppression and thrive.

(The book is to be savored in the read and in the aesthetics.)

“Unlike happiness, joy is a lasting state that can be sustained even when everything is not the way we want it to be.” — bell hooks

Black Joy is everywhere. From the bustling streets of Lagos to hip-hop blasting through apartment windows in the Bronx. From the wide-open coastal desert of Namibia to the lush slopes of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. From the thriving tradition of Candomblé in Bahia to the innovative and trendsetting styles of Soweto, and beyond, Black Joy is present in every place that Black people exist. 

Too often, though, Blackness gets represented with pain, suffering and violence. Yet what is always in the mix—what is always constant, no matter the historical atrocity or systemic injustice—is Black Joy. Amplifying Black Joy is not about dismissing or creating an “alternative” narrative that ignores the realities of collective hurt. Rather, it is about holding the hurt, in tension with the joy, because that is how Black people around the world actually live. Joy deserves more credit for the self-preservation and survival of Black communities than it tends to get.

Enter The Black Joy Project.

Created by educator and activist Kleaver Cruz, The Black Joy Project is a digital and real-world affirmation that Black Joy is a source of healing, resistance, and regeneration, for Black people of all backgrounds and identities. The book expands on a simple question at the root of the project: “What does Black Joy mean to you?” Cruz’s powerful treatise on the subject, combined with stunning, vibrant images of Black Joy in everyday life, present a necessary, perspective-shifting work. Each page of The Black Joy Project is a reprieve for the spirit and, in capturing life across the diaspora, offers an opportunity to do what Black Joy does best: reimagine new ways of being.

A radical reclamation of the Black Madonna as a liberatory figure that offers a richly spiritual and politically charged vision of Black divinity and resistance.

Social psychologist and author of God Is a Black Woman Christena Cleveland brings forth Black Madonna as a Divine icon and spiritual home. This is a call to reclaim a spirituality that has always been ours. Through story, image, reflection, and ritual, the spiritually curious and justice-minded are invited to move beyond dogma and toward embodied, mystical liberation. Written in a voice that bridges scholarship and devotion, this work is for all who are longing for a decolonized, diasporic, and feminine-rooted sacred—one that speaks directly to the soul’s hunger for belonging, meaning, and collective healing.

Drawing on Christian mysticism, Black feminist theology, ancestral memory, and global iconography, this work is both a historical excavation and a contemporary invocation of an iconic figure. Each chapter brings the reader into conversation with a different embodiment of the Black Madonna, from ancient statues hidden in caves to modern artistic visions, illuminating her power as a sacred symbol.