“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue's taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders.

Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do Not Leave Law and returns to Houston, only to discover that Black kids are being forced into crime and violence. And her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother’s life.

Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon—an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her and everyone she loves. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors’ power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.

About the author: J. Elle was born in Houston, Texas, and is a first-generation college student with a bachelor’s in journalism and MA in educational administration and human development. An advocate for marginalized voices in both publishing and her community, J. Elle’s passion for empowering youth dates back to her first career in education. She’s worked as a preschool director, middle school teacher, and high school creative writing mentor. In her spare time, she volunteers at an alternative school, provides feedback for aspiring writers, loves on her three littles, and cooks up dishes true to her Texas and Louisiana roots. Wings of Ebony is her first novel.

Wish I Was a Baller is part New Kid, part The Tryout, and part Dragon Hoops!

Amar Shah has some story to tell! In 1995, he was a fourteen-year-old aspiring sports journalist (and basketball superfan) angling to get into an Orlando Magic team practice. He did, and it took him on the ride of his life!

Wish I Was a Baller is a graphic memoir chronicling Amar's real-life experiences as a fourteen-year-old sports journalist covering the golden era of the NBA, when he befriended Shaq and hung out with Michael Jordan and the Bulls―all while surviving the high school, dealing with crushes, and friendships being tainted by jealousy.

"An inspiring story of friendship, family, and the swishes and misses of being a kid. Baller soars and scores!" ― Jerry Craft, author of the Newbery Award-winning New Kid

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Bestselling author Danielle Paige puts a dark YA spin on Cinderella’s fairy godmother in this new origin story of magic and revenge.

Everyone knows a fairy godmother helped Cinderella get to the ball. But no one knows why.

For centuries, Farrow’s family has used their magic to guide the Queendom. Until the new queen outlaws magic and executes them all. Only Farrow manages to survive, but her magic is left warped: she can now only use it to fill the wishes of others.
Farrow dreams of nothing but revenge. The best way to reach the queen is through her son, who is nearing the age when he will need a bride. But the closer Farrow gets to the prince, the more she finds herself drawn to him. To reclaim her magic and destroy the queen, Farrow will have to question what—and who—she’s willing to sacrifice.
Bestselling author Danielle Paige launches a new series full of intrigue, magic, and romance, set in a lush fairy-tale inspired world.

Love is the trickiest spell of all.
 
Lucinda Caraway loves living in Freya Grove, the mystic seaside town where charms, hexes, and magical beings of all kinds are the norm. She spends her days teaching high school history and her nights reading tea leaves and tending to her conjure garden. It’s a good life . . . but she can’t stop wishing for more.

Until one night, that wish turns into a spell, and suddenly Lucy can’t say no. Not to a public karaoke performance. Not to running a 10K. And, most alarmingly, not to her high school crush, Alexander Dwyer, who needs her help unjinxing his new house—which just happens to be right across the street from hers.

Alex has spent the last ten years traveling the world on adventures Lucy has only ever dreamed of, and he’s planning to leave again as soon as his house is safe to sell. But until Lucy can unhex herself, she and Alex are stuck together. And with so much magic in the air, maybe the next spell Lucy casts will be the one that convinces him to stay.

With Love, Miss Americanah―the Young Adult contemporary romance debut from Jane Igharo―sees a teenager move from Nigeria to America and navigate her senior year with the help of classic teen movies and a new crush, all while working through grief and the rigid expectations of her mother.

17-year-old Enore Adesuwa doesn’t dive into things, she walks in carefully. So when she, her mother, and her sister move from Nigeria to America shortly after her father’s death, she wants to be extremely prepared before attending an American high school. Her cousin, Adrian, doesn’t have time to explain the ins and outs to her but, luckily, he recommends the perfect research tool: teen movies.

Still dealing with grief but armed with a set of rules of survival gathered from these movies (including the crucial rule of keeping a low profile), Enore is ready for her senior year. But when she meets Davi Santiago, it may be much harder than she thought to keep to her rules. Because not only is he super thoughtful (and okay, very good looking), he constantly encourages her to share her incredible singing talent. Enore prefers the background but it just might be time for her to take center stage, even in spite of her mother’s strict expectations.

Maybe it would be easier to follow all the rules, the ones Enore set for herself and the ones her mom imposes, but as every teen movie has taught her, a coming-of-age is nothing without a little rebellion. And with help from her crush, her sister, and some new friends who don’t quite fit the roles she expects them to play, Enore’s senior year might indeed be cinematic.

A companion for anyone experiencing the effects of trauma, featuring true stories of survivors from a broad, inclusive range of backgrounds

With Pleasure: Managing Trauma Triggers for More Vibrant Sex and Relationships is a companion for anyone experiencing the effects of trauma. Through true survivor stories, expert insight, writing prompts, and grounding exercises, it explores pleasure, relationships, and community as worthy and essential antidotes in trying times.
 
Written by trauma-informed sex therapist Jamila Dawson, LMFT, and sexuality journalist and podcaster August McLaughlin, With Pleasure provides a much-needed alternative to harmful “self-help” ideologies that instruct people to “change their thoughts” or “choose to be happy.”

Instead, Dawson and McLaughlin encourage readers to respect their feelings, understand the complexities of a society and systems that fuel trauma, foster self-compassion, and embrace pleasure.

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With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.

Still, she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for their trip to Spain—and certainly can’t follow her dreams of working in a real kitchen someday.

But even with all the rules she has for her life—and all the rules everyone expects her to play by—once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.

Within the Circle is the first anthology to present the entire spectrum of twentieth-century African American literary and cultural criticism. It begins with the Harlem Renaissance, continues through civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and on into contemporary debates of poststructuralist and black feminist theory. Drawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains in her introduction the importance for those "within the circle" of African American literature to examine their own works and to engage this critical canon.
The essays in this collection—many of which are not widely available today—either initiated or gave critical definition to specific periods or movements of African American literature. They address issues such as integration, separatism, political action, black nationalism, Afrocentricity, black feminism, as well as the role of art, the artist, the critic, and the audience. With selections from Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and many others, this definitive collection provides a dynamic model of the cultural, ideological, historical, and aesthetic considerations in African American literature and literary criticism.
A major contribution to the study of African American literature, this volume will serve as a foundation for future work by students and scholars. Its importance will be recognized by all those interested in modern literary theory as well as general readers concerned with the African American experience.

Selections by (partial list): Houston A. Baker, Jr., James Baldwin, Sterling Brown, Barbara Christian, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Sarah Webster Fabio, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W. Lawrence Hogue, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Deborah E. McDowell, Toni Morrison, J. Saunders Redding, George Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Robert B. Stepto, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Mary Helen Washington, Richard Wright

From a National Book Award finalist, Witness is an elegant, insistent narrative of actions taken and not taken.

What does it mean to take action? To bear witness? What does it cost?

In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters—from children to grandmothers to ghosts—live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect, to remember, to stand up for, and to really see each other, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape not only their own futures but the legacies and prospects of their families and their city.

In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness while those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon.

With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully, seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.

How does witnessing a crime change a person? This powerful collection of stories by a star-studded roster of contributors examines this very question, with proceeds benefitting the Alliance for Safe Traffic Stops.

Inspired by recent true events, the all-original stories in Witnesses for the Dead are set in motion by the act of witnessing. The characters who populate these pages are not themselves the perpetrators of the crimes they see, but as they grapple with what to do—take action or retreat into the shadows—their lives are indelibly changed.

In “Envy” by Christopher Chambers, a sweet, shy wallflower looks on as something horrific happens in his neighborhood—revealing something horrific about himself. Agatha Award–winner Richie Narvaez’s “The Gardener of Roses” sees a Puertorriqueña college student on the run from the FBI for her accidental involvement in a “terrorist” plot. Anthony Award–winner Gary Phillips confronts police corruption in “Spiders and Fly.” And the protagonist of “A Family Matter” by IPPY Award–winner Sarah M. Chen investigates the murder of a stranger, leading her to question the political structure of Taiwan entirely. Other stories feature a brothel, the film industry, immigrant detention centers at the Mexico-US border, World War II–torn France, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The stories are incisive, unflinching, wry, dark, and, in some cases, terrifying. You’ll ask yourself: If I saw what they saw, what would I do?

With contributions from: Scott Alderberg, Cara Black, Christopher Chambers, Sarah M. Chen, Aaron Philip Clark, Teresa Dovalpage, Tod Goldberg, Gar Anthony Haywood, Darrell James, Richie Narvaez, Gary Phillips, SJ Rozan, Alex Segura, and Pamela Samuels Young.

A landmark of postcolonial African literature, Wizard of the Crow is an ambitious, magisterial, comic novel from the acclaimed Kenyan novelist, playwright, poet, and critic.

Set in the fictional Free Republic of Aburiria, Wizard of the Crow dramatizes with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for the souls of the Aburirian people, between a megalomaniac dictator and an unemployed young man who embraces the mantle of a magician. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, in this magnificent work of magical realism, Ngugi wa'Thiong'o—one of the most widely read African writers—reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.

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For all the littlest progressives, waking up to seize a new day of justice and activism

Woke babies are up early. Woke babies raise their fists in the air. Woke babies cry out for justice. Woke babies grow up to change the world.

This lyrical and empowering book is both a celebration of what it means to be a baby and what it means to be woke. With bright, playful art, Woke Baby is an anthem of hope in a world where the only limit to a skyscraper is more blue.

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A poignant and rousing debut book of poetry from the former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, CA—the acclaimed, best-selling author of the novel Nightcrawling Leila Mottley follows her trailblazing first novel with a perfectly pitched first collection of poems that demonstrate her spark and scope. woke up no light reckons with themes of reparations, restitution, and desire. Moving in sections from “girlhood” to “neighborhood” to “falsehood” to, finally, “womanhood,” these poems are the breathing life of a Black girl as she grows into adulthood, simultaneously youthful and profound. Each poem is a searing vignette, capturing the dissonance of Black girlhood through visceral language. The collection is sharp and raw, wise and rhythmic, a combination that lights up each page. From unearthing histories to searching for ways to dream of a future in a world constantly on the brink of disaster, Mottley sets forth personal and political revelation with piercing detail. woke up no light confirms Leila Mottley’s arrival and demonstrates the enduring power of her voice—brave and distinctive and thoroughly her own.

Surviving landmines of racism and sexism while moving from the South Bronx projects to the investment Pit, at 19-years old Cin Fabré, ran with the wolves of Wall Street.

Cin Fabré didn’t learn about the stock market growing up, but from her neighborhood and her immigrant parents, she learned how to hustle. She knew that her hustle was the only way she could help her mother; her only ticket out of poverty and away from her abusive father. Shortly after graduating from high school, she applied her energy to selling overpriced eyewear in an optical store making more in commissions than she’d ever seen until one day a woman came in and spent thousands on new glasses without batting an eye. Without hesitation, Cin asked the woman what she did for a living and when she responded “Oh, I’m a stockbroker,” Cin saw this as an omen and vowed that she would become one too. At only nineteen years old, she pushed herself into brokerage firm VTR Capital, which was run by brokers who'd worked at Stratton Oakmont, where Jordan Belfort had reigned. She was shocked to find an army of young, mostly Black and Brown workers like her sitting at phones. She was a witness to a little-known secret in the brokerage system: Latinx and Black employees were forced to do the drudge work of finding investment leads for white male brokers, with no real prospects for promotion.

Most of us are familiar with the excesses of 90s Wall street—the spending, the sex, and the drugs—but the drug coursing through Cin Fabré’s veins was the energy of the trading Pit. “It was palpable the second she walked into the building—the air itself was electrified with frenetic action and the thrill of making money.”

However, during her ascent from cold caller to stockbroker—the only Black woman to do so at the firm—Cin endured constant sexual harassment and racism. Being a broker offered financial gain but no protection as Fabré continued to face propositions from other brokers and clients who believed that their investment money was a down payment on her body.

In Wolf Hustle the author examines her years spent trading frantically—and hustling successfully—Fabré grapples with what is most meaningful in life, ultimately beating Wall Street at its own game.

In the second installment of the suspense-filled series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Ian K. Smith, an ex-cop turned private investigator seeks to fight corruption on the streets of Chicago.

A Cadillac, a pistol, and a corpse make for another morning in Chicago. The body belongs to Walter Griffin, a prominent Black Chicagoan insider hailing from the city’s West Side. He ascended to the upper echelons of the mayor’s office only to meet his end in a watery grave at Wolf Point. Forensics finds his prints on the gun; it’s ruled a suicide.

But grizzled private investigator Ashe Cayne knows better.

Griffin’s children plead with a reluctant Ashe to hunt their father’s killer. They know their dad wouldn’t have taken his own life without a goodbye. And Ashe knows this town’s dark secrets often mean murder is not too far away.

Ashe decides to take on the case and navigate a city rotting with corruption, racial tensions, and sketchy backroom deals. On the bleak streets of Chicago, it’s every man for himself―and that makes everyone a suspect.

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A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street.

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

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Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these health disparities are not attributed to behavioral differences or biology, but to the pervasive devaluation of Black bodies.

Womanist Bioethics addresses this crisis from a bioethical standpoint. It offers a critique of mainstream bioethics as having embraced the perspective of its mainly white, male progenitors, limiting the extent to which it is positioned to engage the issues that particularly affect vulnerable populations. This book makes the provocative but essential case that because African American women– across almost every health indicator– fare worse than others. We must not only include, but center, Black women’s experiences and voices in bioethics discourse and practice.

To this end, Womanist Bioethics develops the first specifically womanist form of bioethics, focused on the diverse vulnerabilities and multiple oppressions that women of color face. This innovative womanist bioethics is grounded in the Black Christian prophetic tradition, based on the ideas that God does not condone oppression and that it is imperative to defend those who are vulnerable. It also draws on womanist theology and Black liberation theology, which take similar stances. At its core, the volume offers a new, broad-based approach to bioethics that is meant as a corrective to mainstream bioethics’ privileging of white, particularly male, experiences, and it outlines ways in which hospitals, churches, and the larger community can better respond to the healthcare needs of Black women.

This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid’s Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman’s right to her own body.

Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman who uses a microchip to monitor her every move, Nelah’s perfect life is precarious. After a drug-fueled evening culminates in an eerie car accident, Nelah commits a desperate crime and buries the body, daring to hope that she can keep one last secret.

The truth claws its way into Nelah’s life from the grave. 

As the ghost of her victim viciously hunts down the people Nelah holds dear, she is thrust into a race against the clock: in order to save any of her remaining loved ones, Nelah must unravel the political conspiracy her victim was on the verge of exposing—or risk losing everyone. 

Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a twisty, nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy. In sickeningly evocative prose, Womb City interrogates how patriarchy pits women against each other as unwitting collaborators in their own oppression. In this devastatingly timely debut novel, acclaimed short fiction writer Tlotlo Tsamaase brings a searing intelligence and Botswana’s cultural sensibility to the question: just how far must a woman go to bring the whole system crashing down?

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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.

From critically acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd comes an eloquent profile of one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the twentieth century—Zora Neale Hurston.

A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance—including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker—acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother, and her 1937 masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a crucial part of the modern literary canon.

Wrapped in Rainbows, the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, illuminates the adventures, complexities, and sorrows of an extraordinary life. Acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston’s history—her youth in the country’s first incorporated all-black town, her friendships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, and her mysterious relationship with vodou. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, Wrapped in Rainbows not only positions Hurston’s work in her time but also offers riveting implications for our own.