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Uncovers the influence of Yoruba culture on women’s religious lives and leadership in religions practiced by Yoruba people

Women in Yoruba Religions examines the profound influence of Yoruba culture in Yoruba religion, Christianity, Islam, and Afro-Diasporic religions such as Santeria and Candomblé, placing gender relations in historical and social contexts. While the coming of Christianity and Islam to Yorubaland has posed significant challenges to Yoruba gender relations by propagating patriarchal gender roles, the resources within Yoruba culture have enabled women to contest the full acceptance of those new norms.

Oyeronke Olademo asserts that Yoruba women attain and wield agency in family and society through their economic and religious roles, and Yoruba operate within a system of gender balance, so that neither of the sexes can be subsumed in the other. Olademo utilizes historical and phenomenological methods, incorporating impressive data from interviews and participant-observation, showing how religion is at the core of Yoruba lived experiences and is intricately bound up in all sectors of daily life in Yorubaland and abroad in the diaspora.

"This is a novel to cherish and share. And this is a history to sing about and affirm -- to proclaim.”
— Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times Bestselling author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, an Oprah Book Club Novel

Inspired by true events, Women of the Post brings to life the heroines who proudly served in the all-Black 6888th Battalion during World War II, finding purpose in their mission and lifelong friendship.

1944, New York City. Judy Washington is tired of having to work at the Bronx Slave Market, cleaning white women’s houses for next to nothing. She dreams of a bigger life, but with her husband fighting overseas, it’s up to her and her mother to earn enough for food and rent. When she’s recruited to join the Women’s Army Corps—offering a steady paycheck and the chance to see the world—Judy jumps at the opportunity.

During training, Judy becomes fast friends with the other women in her unit—Stacy, Bernadette and Mary Alyce—who all come from different cities and circumstances. Under Second Officer Charity Adams's leadership, they receive orders to sort over one million pieces of mail in England, becoming the only unit of Black women to serve overseas during WWII.

The women work diligently, knowing that they're reuniting soldiers with their loved ones through their letters. However, their work becomes personal when Mary Alyce discovers a backlogged letter addressed to Judy. Told through the alternating perspectives of Judy, Charity and Mary Alyce, Women of the Post is an unforgettable story of perseverance, female friendship and self-discovery.

"A moving and compelling tribute to the lives and legacy of Black women in the American military during World War II that feels especially poignant in this moment." — The Boston Globe

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Replete with complexities, abjection, beauty and joy, Women Painting Women offers new ways to imagine the portrayal of women, from Alice Neel to Jordan Casteel

A thematic exploration of nearly 50 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works, Women Painting Women includes nearly 50 portraits that span the 1960s to the present. International in scope, the book recognizes female perspectives that have been underrepresented in the history of postwar figuration. Painting is the focus, as traditionally it has been a privileged medium for portraiture, particularly for white male artists. The artists here use painting and women as subject matter and as vehicles for change. They range from early trailblazers such as Emma Amos and Alice Neel to emerging artists such as Jordan Casteel, Somaya Critchlow and Apolonia Sokol. All place women—their bodies, gestures and individuality—at the forefront.
The pivotal narrative in Women Painting Women is how the artists included use the conventional portrait of a woman as a catalyst to tell another story outside of male interpretations of the female body. They conceive new ways to activate and elaborate on the portrayal of women by exploring themes of the Body, Nature Personified, Selfhood and Color as Portrait. Replete with complexities, realness, abjection, beauty, complications, everydayness and joy, the portraits in this volume make way for women artists to share the stage with their male counterparts in defining the image of woman and how it has evolved.
Artists include: Rita Ackermann, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Emma Amos, María Berrío, Louise Bonnet, Lisa Brice, Joan Brown, Jordan Casteel, Somaya Critchlow, Kim Dingle, Marlene Dumas, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Nicole Eisenman, Tracey Emin, Natalie Frank, Hope Gangloff, Eunice Golden, Jenna Gribbon, Alex Heilbron, Ania Hobson, Luchita Hurtado, Chantal Joffe, Hayv Kahraman, Maria Lassnig, Christiane Lyons, Danielle Mckinney, Marilyn Minter, Alice Neel, Elizabeth Peyton, Paula Rego, Faith Ringgold, Deborah Roberts, Susan Rothenberg, Jenny Saville, Dana Schutz, Joan Semmel, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Arpita Singh, Sylvia Sleigh, Apolonia Sokol, May Stevens, Claire Tabouret, Mickalene Thomas, Nicola Tyson and Lisa Yuskavage.

A powerful study of the women's movement in the U.S. from abolitionist days to the present that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. 

Use this to serve as a reminder of the time you didn't think you would make it out but...Won't He Do It!

1.25 inches tall
Hard enamel with gold plating (WHITE version)
Pin comes with 1 rubber pin back

Scripps National Spelling Bee champ Zaila Avant-garde shares her love of words with new readers in this level 1 Step Into Reading book. Words are magic! Have you heard? Pick a letter. Make a word! New readers will find joyful encouragement in this level 1 easy reader that sings out about the magic of words. Encouraging kids to mix words, match words, shout and rap words, Scripps National Spelling champ Zaila Avante-garde takes readers along on a noisy and boisterous celebration of letters, sounds, and reading. It's the perfect first step for new readers, full of fun and energy, from one of America's most exciting and unique young voices. Step 1 Readers feature big type and easy words for children who know the alphabet and are eager to begin reading. Rhyme and rhythmic text paired with picture clues help children decode the story. Also available by Zaila Avant-garde: Words of Wonder from Z to A It's Not Bragging If It's True

"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.

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A gripping, at times painfully honest, and irresistibly inspirational memoir from global superstar Jada Pinkett Smith. Pulling no punches, Smith chronicles lessons of her storied life—from her rebellious youth running the Baltimore streets in the heyday of drug trafficking, to in-demand actress, outspoken activist, to wife and mother in a seeming dream-come-true of Hollywood success. A rollercoaster ride into the shadow of feeling incurably unlovable, Smith’s account takes us from the depths of suicidal depression to the heights of self-love, spiritual healing, and a collective celebration of authentic feminine power. 

In a media landscape full of false narratives imposed on celebrities, and in a culture primed to deny women their own heroic journeys, Jada Pinkett Smith has chosen to tell her story in her way—by having a conversation with readers, sharing her journey from lost girl to woman warrior to queen of her own heart, to the knowledge that we are all indeed Worthy.  

I open my story at age forty, desperate for help and on the brink of taking my own life. For years I thought I’d checked all the right boxes needed for happiness—career, family, marriage, fame and fortune. All the while I had been running from the wounds within that prevented me from feeling the love and well-being I so wanted. Having come to a point where there was nowhere else to run, I set out on a journey towards curing my urges of self-destruction which required me to confront the truths of the past—from my birth to two teenaged parents, both struggling with addiction, to the haven created by my grandmother who taught me the power of familial love; from my deep friendship with Tupac Shakur that began in high school to my early career breaks and refusal to play the Hollywood game; from my joyful embrace of motherhood to the complicated journey I’ve shared with my husband Will Smith, to lessons learned in the best and worst of times—including “the Slap”; from a deepened spiritual quest for answers to life’s most confounding mysteries to my search to truly understand what it means to love and be loved. Writing Worthy has reinforced my belief that for all our differences, far too many of us suffer from the lies of being unlovable, so much so that we lose sight of who we are and of the richly rewarding lives that are our due. My hope is that my story, as unconventional as it may seem, may give you back your story and the parts that remind you how you came to this life to know—love. Let that love begin with you through the understanding that no matter what—you are Worthy.

Worthy is told in loose chronological order, with segues between the main passages that offer prescriptive, straight to the reader messages and suggestions for applying lessons universally. Meant to be conversation starters, these sections will be in red ink, bringing readers to the “table” and asking them to examine their own lives. An impactful, authentic, and rare memoir that engages and educates, Worthy is a love song to self, to family, to life, and to the world. 

“bell hooks’s brave memoir of struggling to find her own work, love, and independence.” ―Gloria Steinem
With her customary boldness and insight, brilliant social critic and public intellectual bell hooks traces her writer’s journey in Wounds of Passion. She shares the difficulties and triumphs, the pleasures and the dangers, of a life devoted to writing. hooks lets readers see the ways one woman writer can find her own voice while forging relationships of love in keeping with her feminist thinking. With unflinching courage and hard-won wisdom, hooks reveals the intimate details and provocative ideas of the life path she carved out of words, lighting the way for all writers who would tread in her wake.
This memoir is an illuminating vision of a writer’s life from one of America’s treasured authors.
“I love this book. Each offering from bell hooks is a major event, as she has so much to give us.” ―Maya Angelou

Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with “skinny, luminous peoples” while being a “cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person,” “with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees,” and hides Entenmann’s cookies under her bed and unopened bills under her pillow.

What are the conditions needed for our nation to bridge cultural and racial divides? By "writing beyond race," noted cultural critic bell hooks models the constructive ways scholars, activists, and readers can challenge and change systems of domination.

In the spirit of previous classics like Outlaw Culture and Reel to Real, this new collection of compelling essays interrogates contemporary cultural notions of race, gender, and class. From the films Precious and Crash to recent biographies of Malcolm X and Henrietta Lacks, hooks offers provocative insights into the way race is being talked about in this "post-racial" era.

A dazzling hybrid of personal memoir and criticism, considering the work of Black visual artists as a means to explore loss, legacy, and the reclamation of life through art.

At the age of twenty-one, Erica Cardwell finds herself in New York City, reeling from the loss of her mother and numb to the world around her. She turns inward instead, reading books and composing poetry, eventually falling into the work of artists such as Blondell Cummings, Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O’Grady, and Kara Walker. Through them, she communes with her mother’s spirit and legacy, and finds new ways to interrogate her writing and identity.

Wrong Is Not My Name weaves together autobiography, criticism, and theory, and considers how Black women create alternative, queer, and “hysterical” lives through visual culture and performance. In poetic, interdisciplinary essays—combining analytical and lyrical stream-of-consciousness—Cardwell examines archetypes such as the lascivious Jezebel, the caretaking Mammy, and the elusive Sapphire to formulate new and inventive ways to write about art.

Pioneering and inquisitive, Wrong Is Not My Name celebrates Black womanhood, and illuminates the ways in which art and storytelling reside at the core of being human.

We are so excited for Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi, the third and final book in the Legacy of Orisha series, which comes out June 25, 2024!!!

In preparation, we are re-reading Children of Blood and Bone as well as Children of Virtue and Vengeance with our Young Adult Book Club for Adults and we want all of you to join us!

Here's how: 

• The first bookclub meeting is free and open to anyone. 
• However, our bookclub meeting for Children of Virtue and Vengeance and Children of Anguish and Anarchy are exclusively available to those who pre-order Children of Anguish and Anarchy through us.
• You can pre-order Children of Anguish and Anarchy here !
• Once you pre-order, you'll be added to our exclusive Legacy of Orisha Read-A-Thon Facebook Group
• You will also receive the links for each book club meeting and a little bit of swag.

Meeting Times

• Children of Blood and Bone - May 21 at 7 PM CST (virtual)
• Children of Virtue and Vengeance - June 24 at 7 PM CST (virtual)
• Children of Anguish and Anarchy - July 27 at Time: TBA (hybrid)

About the Book(s)

Children of Blood and Bones 

About Children of Virtue and Vengeance

About Children of Anguish and Anarchy 

Newbery Medalist Meg Medina returns to her powerful YA novel about school bullying with a dynamic graphic-novel edition adapted and illustrated by Mel Valentine Vargas.

It’s the beginning of sophomore year, and Piedad “Piddy” Sanchez is having a hard time adjusting to her new high school. Things don’t get any easier when Piddy learns that Yaqui Delgado hates her and wants to kick her ass. Piddy doesn’t even know who Yaqui is, never mind what she’s done to piss her off. Rumor has it that Yaqui thinks Piddy is stuck-up, shakes her stuff when she walks, and isn’t Latina enough with her white skin, good grades, and no accent. And Yaqui isn’t kidding around, so Piddy better watch her back. At first, Piddy is more concerned with learning about the father she’s never met, navigating her rocky relationship with her mom, and staying in touch with her best friend, Mitzi. But when the harassment escalates, avoiding Yaqui and her gang takes over Piddy’s life. Is there any way for Piddy to survive without closing herself off from those who care about her—or running away? More relevant than ever a decade after its initial publication, Mel Valentine Vargas’s graphic novel adaptation of Meg Medina’s ultimately empowering story is poised to be discovered by a new generation of readers.

Black history, cultural expression, and the natural world fuse in Janice N. Harrington’s Yard Show to investigate how Black Americans have shaped a sense of belonging and place within the Midwestern United States. As seen through the documentation of objects found within yard shows, this collection of descriptive, lyrical, and experimental poems speaks to the Black American Imagination in all its multiplicity.

Harrington’s speaker is a chronicler of yesterdays, using the events of the past to center and advocate for a future that celebrates pleasure and self-fulfillment within Black communities.

For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety of cultural artifacts, from Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing and Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire to the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. The result is a poignant collection of essays which, like all of hooks's work, is above all else concerned with transforming oppressive structures of domination.

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.

She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured, and sold every day. There, Pheby is exposed not just to her Jailer’s cruelty but also to his contradictions. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit him, and she soon faces the ultimate sacrifice.

What’s the harm in a pseudonym? Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. 

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Meet Yinka: a thirty-something, Oxford-educated, British Nigerian woman with a well-paid job, good friends, and a mother whose constant refrain is “Yinka, where is your huzband?”

Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story.  But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right.

Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself?

Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? brilliantly subverts the traditional romantic comedy with an unconventional heroine who bravely asks the questions we all have about love. Wry, acerbic, moving, this is a love story that makes you smile but also makes you think—and explores what it means to find your way between two cultures, both of which are yours.

This Caldecott Honor classic is a simple yet important story about friendship.

Two kids meet on a street. "Yo!" says one. "Yes?" says the other. And so begins a conversation that turns strangers into friends. With vibrant illustrations, Chris Raschka's rhythmic read-aloud is a celebration of differences -- and how it just takes a few words to overcome them. More relevant than ever in our divided world, this 1993 Caldecott Award-winning classic is presented for the first time in a board book format.

From the celebrated author of Freedom Dreams, a thought-provoking look at how the multicolored urban working class are the solution—not the problem—to the ills of American cities

A limited Beacon Classics edition, with a gorgeous spot gloss cover and retro, classic palette

In this classic work, acclaimed historian Robin D. G. Kelley undermines false perceptions of Black culture to highlight how grassroots movements hold the key to revolutionizing urban America.

Starting with an insightful look at street culture—from the “dozens” to pick-up basketball—Kelley shows how these misunderstandings of Black culture are at the center of the failure of public policy, scholarship and social movements to save our cities. He critiques both conservatives and liberals for ignoring what these cultural forms mean for their practitioners. Blending wit, intellect, and historical detail, he offers groundbreaking analyses of the multicultural roots of Black urban culture and the mistakes of the labor movement in denying the importance of cultural factors.

With Kelley’s crucial insights as timely now as when they were first published, this repackaged edition of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! shows how the most heartening progress toward a better future for urban America is revealed in urban grassroots movements.

Funny, thoughtful, inspiring, and deeply personal essays about yoga, wellness, and life from author of EVERY BODY YOGA, Jessamyn Stanley. Stanley explores her relationship (and ours) to yoga (including why we practice, rather than how); wrestles with issues like cultural appropriation, materialism, and racism; and explores the ways we can all use yoga as a tool for self-love. 

Finding self-acceptance both on and off the mat.
In Sanskrit, yoga means to “yoke.” To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of “yoke” is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday—a yoga that is not just about perfecting your downward dog but about applying the hard lessons learned on the mat to the even harder daily project of living.
In a series of deeply honest, funny autobiographical essays, Jessamyn explores everything from imposter syndrome to cannabis to why it’s a full-time job loving yourself, all through the lens of yoke. She calls out an American yoga complex that prefers debating the merits of cotton versus polyblend leggings rather than owning up to its overwhelming Whiteness. She questions why the Western take on yoga so often misses—or misuses—the tradition’s spiritual dimension. And reveals what she calls her own “whole-ass problematic”: Growing up Baháí, loving astrology, learning to meditate, finding prana in music.
And in the end, Jessamyn invites every reader to find the authentic spirit of yoke—linking that good and that bad, that light and that dark.

Tell your littlest unicorn just how unique, divine, and magical they are with this book of affirmations! And celebrate their inner unicorn with the first board book in the Afro Unicorn line. There is no one quite like you! You are a very special unicorn. You are an Afro Unicorn! This empowering board book is the latest installment from the Afro Unicorn line of books, which features stories about Black and Brown unicorns embracing their outer beauty and inner abilities. When Afro Unicorn creator April Showers realized that her favorite emoji—the unicorn!—was only available in white, she was inspired to create a more inclusive brand for children of color to celebrate how magical, unique, and divine they truly are. Don’t miss the other books in the Afro Unicorn series— A Magical Day We Are Afro Unicorns Divine Makes a Splash You are a Unicorn

In this debut picture book from Taraji P. Henson, quirky, stylish and a bit off-the-cuff Lil TJ is ready for her first day of school. But when she gets there, TJ finds that everything she does is a little different than everyone else and she’s standing out in all the wrong ways. Once TJ’s classmate Beau notices, he relentlessly teases her. TJ is filled with anxiety and doubt until she recalls some important words of wisdom from her Grandma Patsy. When she looks inside to her own creativity and personality, she figures out how to help herself make new friends! —and helps someone else too!

You Can Be a Good Friend (No Matter What!) is the perfect read for:

• Easing back-to-school jitters and setting a course for the new school year
• Helping children ages 4-8 to overcome anxieties and embrace what makes them unique
• Classroom and library story time, as well as bedtime reading
• Promoting mental wellness and learning socialization skills, embracing the importance of standing in their own uniqueness, and promoting friendship over bullying.

A dangerous dance of passion and power unfolds when two wounded souls collide in this sizzling unconventional romance by national bestselling author K.C. Mills.

Nari Collette finds herself on the brink of homelessness after a crushing betrayal. Desperate for stability, she reluctantly agrees to an unconventional proposal from the attractive and enigmatic Kincaid Akel.

Determined to reclaim his seat as heir of a dangerous criminal enterprise, Kincaid needs a wife to solidify his position, but he never expected his carefully selected bride to ignite such fierce desire. As Nari awakens feelings he long thought dead, Kincaid struggles to maintain control.

Their entangled marriage of convenience quickly becomes a battleground of wills as Nari fights to protect her heart, even as she's irresistibly drawn to her dangerous new husband.

As enemies close in from all sides, and with both their hearts and lives on the line, Nari and Kincaid must decide if they can trust each other with their deepest secrets . . . or if the very passion that binds them will ultimately be their downfall.

Introduction by New York Times bestselling author Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.

“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison

One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white doctor. Among the selections are Hurston’s well-known works such as “How It Feels to be Colored Me” and “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience.” 

The essays in this essential collection are grouped thematically and cover a panoply of topics, including politics, race and gender, and folkloric study from the height of the Harlem Renaissance to the early years of the Civil Rights movement. Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and time.

From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story.

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma – who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods – the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.

You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.

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The award-winning author of Magical Negro traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery. In a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious. With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.