A landmark exhibition on display at the Brooklyn Museum from April 21 through September 17, 2017, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. It showcases the work of black women artists such as Emma Amos, Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O'Grady, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, and Betye Saar, making it one of the first major exhibitions to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color. In so doing, it reorients conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period.

The accompanying Sourcebook republishes an array of rare and little-known documents from the period by artists, writers, cultural critics, and art historians such as Gloria Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, bell hooks, Lucy R. Lippard, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Lowery Stokes Sims, Alice Walker, and Michelle Wallace. These documents include articles, manifestos, and letters from significant publications as well as interviews, some of which are reproduced in facsimile form. The Sourcebook also includes archival materials, rare ephemera, and an art-historical overview essay. Helping readers to move beyond standard narratives of art history and feminism, this volume will ignite further scholarship while showing the true breadth and diversity of black women’s engagement with art, the art world, and politics from the 1960s to the 1980s.

We Wanted a Revolution will also be on display at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles from October 13, 2017 through January 14, 2018; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York from February 17, 2018 through May 27, 2018; and at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston from June 26, 2018 through September 30, 2018.

Published by the Brooklyn Museum and distributed by Duke University Press

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We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

From island life in the Caribbean to a new beginning in France, a young man comes of age in a sweeping and lyrical novel about family, loss, secrets, and finding freedom from the past.

Eighteen-year-old Salomon Destin graduates high school and anxiously trades life on Guadeloupe in the Caribbean for France to continue his studies.

Strasbourg is his new home. He’s carving out a promising new path for himself. And most of all, he’s left behind the disorder of so much family drama, including that of a dissolute father, a mother who turns a blind eye to the chaos, his troubled and aimless brother Junior, and Salomon’s inherited obligations as peacekeeper. Although one year away, in love for the first time, and an ocean safely separating his old life and new, Salomon is pulled back to the island by the news of a tragedy. As unexpectedly comforting as Guadeloupe is―the food, music, ocean, and sun stirring up beautiful island memories―the traumas of the past remain.

Years later, while facing the echoes of family demons in his own marriage and confronting the stunning secrets and revelations to come, Salomon, and everyone he loves, must find the strength to move forward once and for all. But will freedom come with a price?

Winner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A Washington Post best nonfiction book of 2023 | Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

“A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book.” ―Robert Kolker, The Washington Post

“[A] moving and superbly reported book.” ―Jessica Winter, The New Yorker

“A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book.” ―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023

The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children―and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.

On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family’s loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children.

Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children’s birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts’ adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian’s reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.

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Two young girls. Two disparate stories. One unlikely friendship....

Dani comes from the richest, most famous Black family in Texas and seems to have everything a girl could want. So why does she keep using and engaging in other self-destructive behavior?

Camila’s Colombian-American family doesn’t have much, but she knows exactly what she wants out of life and works her ass off to get it. So why does she keep failing, and why does she self-harm every time she does?

When Dani and Camila find themselves rooming together at Peach Tree Hills, a treatment facility in beautiful rural Georgia, they initially think they’ll never get along—and they’ll never get better. But then they find a mysterious music box filled with letters from a former resident of PTH, and together they set out to solve the mystery of who this girl was . . . and who she’s become. The investigation will bring them together, and what they find at the end might just bring them hope.

From award-winning author Stephanie Kuehn comes a breathtaking tale of friendship and healing. Both poignant and timely, We Weren’t Looking to Be Found is complex, hopeful, and heartbreaking all at once.

Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It’s time to think this through.

“Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous "Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm and take down powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, call outs are seen by some as having gone too far. But what is “too far” when you’re talking about imbalances of power and patterns of harm? And what happens when people in social justice movements direct their righteous anger inward at one another?

In We Will Not Cancel Us, movement mediator adrienne maree brown reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible paths beyond this impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes even from from its targets. However, brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn’t, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in ways that reflect our values?

With an Afterword by Malkia Devich-Cyril.

Escape from grind culture and dehumanizing systems with this visionary guide from the author of the New York Times bestseller Rest Is Resistance
 
We don’t believe we are worthy of rest unless we burn ourselves out to accomplish it. Our thinking has been limited by disconnection, sleep deprivation, and the unattainable call for perfection. The systems will never give us rest. It is something we must create for ourselves and each other. 
 
Just as the North Star guided the enslaved on their journeys to freedom, visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey leads us to imagine a new world: one in which we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs and embrace rest as a healing spiritual practice. 
 
Inspired by vintage hymnals, prayer books, and abolitionist pamphlets, We Will Rest! is a modern sacred object, medicine for a sick and exhausted world. Weaving together meditations and poetry with storytelling and powerful art, Hersey provokes liberation through refusal and trickster rebellion in the face of capitalism and white supremacy. 
 
There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!
 
 ***
 
Have you ever noticed
when you ask for rest
the body becomes a holy trumpet
the walls come tumbling down?

Essence bestselling author Kayla Perrin delivers a novel of suspense where a night of revenge turns deadly.

"I was thinking of some kind of initiation. Tailored just for her. The kind that will teach her a lesson not to mess with me."
--from We'll Never Tell

Shandra James is a man stealer. It's a sport to her, a game that she always wins. As a pledge of the exclusive Alpha Sigma Pi sorority, she should know her place, and know not to throw herself at a sister's boyfriend. But she's marked a new target: Henry Reid.

Henry's fiancée, Phoebe, and her sorority sisters, Miranda and Camille, decide to teach Shandra a lesson one night. A lesson that involves humiliation but nothing more. But unexpectedly the lesson turns deadly and the three women find themselves facing three new rules: Never mention what happened that night, protect each other, and tell no one. Yet when a murderer comes calling, they each discover that rules are meant to be broken.

We'll Never Tell is Kayla Perrin's most provocative, suspenseful novel yet.

A collection of exceptional new essays by one of the most significant contemporary writers on the world stage

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.

Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation―we’re alone now, we can talk. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.

A collection of exceptional new essays by one of the most significant contemporary writers on the world stage

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.

Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation―we’re alone now, we can talk. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.

Here's a humorous picture book that shows the ways in which we are all different... and how that's really cool! The kid-friendly text and vibrant illustrations explore external and internal similarities and differences through comparisons of animals, objects, and people. A perfect gift for children ages 4-8.

Do you know there's something totally cool about each of us? We're different in all kinds of ways... fun and wonderful ways!

We can be different on the outside, like a red apple and a yellow apple. But we can also be as different as apples and dogs, with different shapes, sizes, and colors.

We can be different on the inside too! We can have different emotions, different dreams, and different ways of expressing ourselves.

There are so many ways we can be different. But it’s not only okay… it’s totally cool!

With Camey Yeh’s warm text, comical comparisons, and quirky illustrations, We’re Different and It’s Totally Cool! is the perfect read-aloud book that celebrates everyone's uniqueness and all the ways we are fabulously different—inside and out!

This much-needed conversational guide to the stock market by a financial expert empowers you to heal money wounds, establish financial literacy, and make your money work for you.
 
Financial educator Linda García breaks down one of the most elusive yet effective financial systems in existence. A single mother at a young age, Linda struggled to survive. As bills and eviction notices flowed in, she felt stuck. After getting advice from a work friend, Linda took the leap and invested two hundred dollars. Soon, two hundred dollars a month grew to seven thousand dollars, then that became a high six-figure investment. Now she owns her home and is making more money than she’d ever imagined, and is ready to help other people of color access stock knowledge and achieve financial success.

As a proud Latina, García understands that building wealth can mean more than stepping into financial arenas historically kept from communities of color. It may first require getting to the root of our money wounds—the factors and experiences that limit our capacity to feel deserving of wealth and capable of building it. In this investing playbook, she guides you on how to establish a budget, create your “opportunity fund,” and pay yourself first.  She shows you how to analyze a company, choose the right stocks for you, and create a plan to multiply your money.
 
You’ll learn:

• What it means to invest, where your money goes, and how to read stock charts.
• How to assess companies, pick your first stock, and buy your first shares.
• Tactics to break free from a scarcity mindset and grow your stocks to create life-changing wealth.

Can Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, sniff out Mrs. Winter’s missing cat before her big trip? This is the first book of a fun full-color early chapter book series about the best detectives in the Midwest!

Detective Tip #1 Try not to jump to conclusions. Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, are the best detectives in the whole world—or at least their neighborhood. But can they find Mrs. Winters’s missing cat before her big trip? Or will the case of the cat-napped kitty be their first unsolved mystery? 

HarperChapters build confident readers one chapter at a time! With short, fast-paced books, art on every page, and milestone markers at the end of every chapter, they're the perfect next step for fans of I Can Read!

Did Wednesday’s friend really take her twin brother’s missing drone? Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, are on the case in the second book of this full-color, fully illustrated HarperChapters series.

Every book in the HarperChapters line of early chapter books sets newly independent readers up for success with short chapters, art on every page, and interactive features that celebrate progress and effort!

Detective Tip #2: Don’t forget to use your eyes, ears, and even your nose!

Wednesday’s brother’s drone went missing in their own backyard. And that can mean only one thing—the thief is one of their friends! Can the neighborhood’s newest service dog help Wednesday and Woof sniff out the bandit? Or will the case of the missing drone be a doggone disaster? 

A double mystery means double the pressure for Wednesday and Woof when a robot and a hamster go missing right before the school science fair in this full-color, fully-illustrated HarperChapters series.

Every HarperChapters early chapter book sets newly independent readers up for success with short chapters, art on every page, and interactive features that celebrate progress and effort!

Detective Tip #3: Use your imagination and stay calm! 

When a classmate’s DIY robot goes missing right before the school science fair, Detective Wednesday Nadir and her service dog, Woof, are sure they can find it…until the class hamster also disappears! Now the pressure is on! Can Wednesday and Woof use the scientific method to solve two cases at once—or will the stress cause a mess?

Using traditional techniques such as direct carving and lost-wax casting, Mosley's early works in wood and later works in bronze enter into a dance between the organic and manmade

Born in 1926 in New Castle, Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Mosley has made sculptures from wood for over six and a half decades from his home in Pittsburgh. Using only a chisel and gauge to maintain the integrity of the original log, Mosley reworks salvaged timber into monumental abstractions. Through a process of direct carving, the artist's marks respond to and rearticulate the natural gradations of the material's surface. With influences ranging from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncusi, from Scandinavian design to West African sculpture--Mosley's "sculptural improvisations," as he calls them, also take cues from the modernist traditions of jazz. Weight in Space is the most comprehensive monograph on the artist's oeuvre to date. In addition to a detailed chronology, this volume features new scholarship by Fred Moten and Catharina Manchanda, a conversation between Mosley and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and excerpts from an extensive oral history interview conducted by Bridget R. Cooks and Amanda Tewes.

A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne

My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.

In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.

Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.

An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.

From Philip K. Dick Award finalist Elwin Cotman, an irresistibly unnerving collection of stories that explore the anxieties of living while Black—a high-wire act of literary-fantastical hybrid fiction.

A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn.

In each of the seven stories in this collection, characters pursue their obsessions on paths to glory and destruction while around them their worlds twist and warp, oscillating between reality and impossibility. On display throughout is Cotman’s ability to reveal truths about the human experience—about friendship, love, betrayal, bitterness—through whimsy, horror, and fantasy. Elegiac in tone, imaginative and humorous in their execution, the character-driven stories in Weird Black Girls challenge, incite, and entertain.

Eleven-year-old Tony Weaver, Jr. loves comic books, anime, and video games, and idolizes the heroic, larger-than-life characters he finds there. But his new classmates all think he’s a weirdo. Bullied by his peers, Tony struggles with the hurt of not being accepted and tries to conform to other people's expectations. After a traumatic event shakes him to his core, he embarks on a journey of self love that will require him to become the hero of his own story.

Weirdo is a triumphant, witty, and comedic story for any kid who's ever felt awkward, left out, or like they don't belong. An adolescence survival guide that will give every reader the confidence to make it to the other side.

Langston Collin Wilkins returns to the city where he grew up to illuminate the complex relationship between place, identity, and music in Houston’s hip hop culture. Interviews with local rap artists, producers, and managers inform an exploration of how artists, audiences, music, and place interact to create a heritage that musicians negotiate in a variety of ways. Street-based musicians, avant-garde underground rappers, and Christian artists offer candid views of the scene while Wilkins delves into related aspects like slab, the area’s hip hop-related car culture. What emerges is a portrait of a dynamic reciprocal process where an artist, having identified with and embodied a social space, reproduces that space in a performance even as the performance reconstructs the social space.

A vivid journey through a southern hip hop bastion, Welcome 2 Houston offers readers an inside look at a unique musical culture.

“Storylines and twists abound. But action is secondary to atmosphere: Onuzo excels at evoking a stratified city, where society weddings feature ‘ice sculptures as cold as the unmarried belles’ and thugs write tidy receipts for kickbacks extorted from homeless travelers.” —The New Yorker

When army officer Chike Ameobi is ordered to kill innocent civilians, he knows it is time to desert his post. As he travels toward Lagos with Yemi, his junior officer, and into the heart of a political scandal involving Nigeria’s education minister, Chike becomes the leader of a new platoon, a band of runaways who share his desire for a different kind of life. Among them is Fineboy, a fighter with a rebel group, desperate to pursue his dream of becoming a radio DJ; Isoken, a 16–year–old girl whose father is thought to have been killed by rebels; and the beautiful Oma, escaping a wealthy, abusive husband.

Full of humor and heart, Welcome to Lagos is a high–spirited novel about aspirations and escape, innocence and corruption. It offers a provocative portrait of contemporary Nigeria that marks the arrival in the United States of an extraordinary young writer.

Inspired by the eagerly awaited birth of her daughter, Kaavia James Union Wade, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning actress Gabrielle Union pens a festive and universal love letter from parents to little ones, perfect for welcoming a baby to the party of life!

Reminiscent of favorites such as The Wonderful Things You’ll Be by Emily Winfield Martin, I’ve Loved You Since Forever by Hoda Kotb, and Take Heart, My Child by Ainsley Earhardt, Welcome to the Party is an upbeat celebration of new life that you’ll want to enjoy with your tiny guest of honor over and over again.

 A great gift for all occasions, especially Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, baby showers, and birthdays.

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Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the rest of their lives—but it doesn’t happen as frequently for all of us. In this timely anthology, “well-read black girl” Glory Edim brings together original essays by some of our best black female writers and creative voices to shine a light on how important it is that everyone—regardless of gender, race, religion, or abilities—can find themselves in literature.

Contributors include Jesmyn Ward (Sing Unburied Sing), Lynn Nottage (Sweat), Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn), Gabourey Sidibe (This Is Just My Face), Morgan Jerkins (This Will Be My Undoing), Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), Rebecca Walker (Black, White and Jewish), Barbara Smith (Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology), and others.

Whether it’s learning about the complexities of femalehood from Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, finding a new type of love in The Color Purple, or using mythology to craft an alternative black future, each essay reminds us why we turn to books in times of both struggle and relaxation. Edim has created a space where black women’s writing and knowledge and life experiences are lifted up, to be shared with all readers who value the power of a story to help us understand the world and ourselves.

 Meticulous and driven Gwen Gilmore knows what she wants... especially in a man. She is newly single and doesn't have time for lackluster chemistry or mixed signals. But the dating scene proves to be slow and unserious, and she realizes she may need some help.

Professional help.

A matchmaker, to be more specific.

Nothing will distract her from finding a man who checks all the boxes, except maybe her brother's grumpy best friend who's just moved into her home.

Anthony Woods has had a crush on his best friend's sister since the day he met her, and he's managed the unfortunate affliction by keeping his distance. However, when apartment problems have him temporarily sleeping on her couch, Gwen is suddenly closer than ever. And as much as he tries, his scowls and frowns can't stop the sparks from flying.

 As they connect and get to know each other, Gwen can't help but notice when the perfect-on-paper boyfriend she has in mind starts to take an unexpected shape. Will she stick to the dating plan outlined by the professionals? Or admit when it comes to love, there's no right way to fall.

Inspired by Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?, these joyous portraits of Black men engaged in everyday life celebrate the deep roots and rich cultures of African American communities.

Have you ever wondered . . .
What do brothas do all day?
Brothas drive. Brothas dance. Brothas work. Brothas listen. And brothas love.

Scarry’s now-classic book, first published in 1968, is a richly illustrated guide to the places, jobs, and activities that defined the daily lives of grown-ups. Author-illustrator Ajuan Mance created What Do Brothas Do All Day?, like Scarry, in response to children’s innate curiosity about the activities and experiences of others, but also to meet the longing many kids have for characters and communities that look and feel like the people and places they know.

This joyous reflection of real Black men and boys engaged in everyday life is a gift for Black kids who rarely see themselves reflected in the pages of a book and an affirmation of their world and the people who populate it. From grocery shopping and waiting for a trim at the barbershop to singing, dancing, and laughing with friends, Mance captures the beauty in the ordinary, affirming the enduring strength of the Black community.

DIVERSE BOOKS FOR KIDS: This picture book features real Black men the author has observed in the world—everyday people, not models or stereotypes. One fan describes it as "just a rainbow of Black men, a beautiful rainbow of Black men."

LIBRARIAN LOVE: What Do Brothas Do All Day? began as an all-ages zine, but the author began to conceive of it as a children's book after being approached by two children's librarians.

INSPIRED BY A CLASSIC: As the author notes in the book, "I first encountered Richard Scarry’s work in the early 1970s when I was about six years old. The world of adults, with its grocery lists, PTA meetings, shopping trips, and dinner parties, seemed both tantalizingly exotic and impossibly complex. Today, those same descriptors can be applied to the ways that many people of all ages perceive Black men."

AN INVITATION: The book ends with an invitation, perhaps even a call to action: What will you do today?

Perfect for:

• Parents and grandparents seeking engaging read-aloud and read-along picture books
• Teachers and librarians looking for books featuring Black communities
• Gift for readers of Jacqueline Woodson, Kwame Alexander, Cedella Marley, and Derrick Barnes books
• Fans of Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?

In her debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, Therí Alyce Pickens investigates the complex structures of Black storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability, Pickens crafts and questions the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. Throughout, Pickens mines the formal structures and the play of Black English within the lives and afterlives of Harriet Tubman, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Breonna Taylor, and figments of our collective imagination. Her singular poetic voice effortlessly flows between what she knows and what she’s heard and between everyday Black conversation and her work in cultural criticism and disability studies. Traveling at the speed of thought, Pickens explores a praxis of storytelling governed by the places where truths and fables kiss.

The first book in a funny supernatural graphic novel series for early readers about an eight-year-old boy who solves mysteries with the ghost of his former class pet.

Mr. Pebbles is dead, and everyone thinks it’s Carter’s fault!

When Carter’s third-grade class accuses him of killing the class pet, a naked mole rat named Mr. Pebbles who shivers a lot and smells a little funny, can Carter clear his name . . . with the help of Mr. Pebbles's ghost?

From one of the most prominent voices in the trauma conversation comes a groundbreaking new way to heal on a personal and a collective level.

“I love this book.”—Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score

“In a time when so many of us are being trained in cynicism, this book stands in necessary defiance.”—Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies and This Here Flesh

As we emerge from the past few years of collective upheaval, are we ready to face the complexities of our time with joy, authenticity, and connection? Now more than ever, we must learn to heal ourselves, connect with one another, and embody our values. In this revolutionary book, Prentis Hemphill shows us how.

What It Takes to Heal asserts that the principles of embodiment—the recognition of our body’s sensations and habits, and the beliefs that inform them—are critical to lasting healing and change. Hemphill, an expert embodiment practitioner, therapist, and activist who has partnered with Brené Brown, Tarana Burke, and Esther Perel, among others, shows us that we don't have to carry our emotional burdens alone. Hemphill demonstrates a future in which healing is done in community, weaving together stories from their own experience as a trauma survivor with clinical accounts and lessons learned from their time as a social movement architect. They ask, “What would it do to movements, to our society and culture, to have the principles of healing at the very center? And what does it do to have healing at the center of every structure and everything we create?”

In this life-affirming framework for the way forward, Hemphill shows us how to heal our bodies, minds, and souls—to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to break down the doors of disconnection and take the necessary risks to reshape our world toward justice.

From Laura Obuobi, author of Black Gold and NAACP Image Award nominee, and illustrator Anna Cunha comes a whimsical bedtime story about the love between a Black father and his daughter. This tender tale with lush natural imagery and pure Black joy captures love’s vastness, showing us its greatest form is often the one between parent and child.

One question must be answered before Afia can slip into a peaceful sleep: What does love look like? With the companionship of her loving papa, Afia journeys to find love and learns that it is the warmth of the sun’s hugs, the brook’s soothing song, and other mesmerizing gifts of nature. But Afia’s quest also teaches her that she may not have to go too far to see the emotion at the heart of the world’s wonders.