An updated introduction to the religions developed in the Caribbean region

Creole Religions of the Caribbean offers a comprehensive introduction to the overlapping religions that have developed as a result of the creolization process. Caribbean peoples drew on the variants of Christianity brought by European colonizers, as well as on African religious and healing traditions and the remnants of Amerindian practices, to fashion new systems of belief. From Vodou, Santería, Regla de Palo, the Abakuá Secret Society, and Obeah to Quimbois and Espiritismo, the volume traces the historical–cultural origins of the major Creole religions, as well as the newer traditions such as Rastafari.

This third edition updates the scholarship by featuring new critical approaches that have been brought to bear on the study of religion, such as queer studies, environmental studies, and diasporic studies. The third edition also expands the regional considerations of the diaspora to the US Latinx communities that are influenced by Creole spiritual practices, taking into account the increased significance of material culture?art, music, literature, and healing practices influenced by Creole religions.

What is Critical Race Theory and why is it under fire from the political right? This foundational essay collection, which defines key terms and includes case studies, is the essential work to understand the intellectual movement

Why did the president of the United States, in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis, take it upon himself to attack Critical Race Theory? Perhaps Donald Trump appreciated the power of this groundbreaking intellectual movement to change the world.

In recent years, Critical Race Theory has vaulted out of the academy and into courtrooms, newsrooms, and onto the streets. And no wonder: as intersectionality theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw recently told Time magazine, "It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it." The panicked denunciations from the right notwithstanding, CRT has changed the way millions of people interpret our troubled world.

Edited by its principal founders and leading theoreticians, Critical Race Theory was the first book to gather the movement's most important essays. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from scholars including Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Dorothy Roberts, Lani Guinier, Duncan Kennedy, and many others. It is essential reading in an age of acute racial injustice.

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The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.

It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It’s strictly the straight-and-narrow for him — until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire.  But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated – and deadly.

1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney’s endearingly violent partner in crime.  It’s getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem.  He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook – to their regret.

1976.  Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole country is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations.  Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. ("Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!"), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A and rising politician Alexander Oakes.  When a fire severely injures one of Carney’s tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted.

CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family.  Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.

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In this beautifully crafted, Rashomon-like novel, Maryse Conde has written a gripping story imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture. Francis Sancher--a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others--is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe.  None of the villagers are particularly surprised, since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself.  As the villagers come to pay their respects they each--either in a speech to the mourners, or in an internal monologue--reveal another piece of the mystery behind Sancher's life and death.  

Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community. In the lush and vivid prose for which she has become famous, Conde has constructed a Guadeloupean wake for Francis Sancher.  Retaining the full color and vibrance of Conde's homeland, Crossing the Mangrove pays homage to Guadeloupe in both subject and structure.

The barbershop is where the magic happens. Boys go in as lumps of clay and, with princely robes draped around their shoulders, a dab of cool shaving cream on their foreheads, and a slow, steady cut, they become royalty. That crisp yet subtle line makes boys sharper, more visible, more aware of every great thing that could happen to them when they look good: lesser grades turn into As; girls take notice; even a mother’s hug gets a little tighter. Everyone notices.

A fresh cut makes boys fly.

This rhythmic, read-aloud title is an unbridled celebration of the self-esteem, confidence, and swagger boys feel when they leave the barber’s chair—a tradition that places on their heads a figurative crown, beaming with jewels, that confirms their brilliance and worth and helps them not only love and accept themselves but also take a giant step toward caring how they present themselves to the world. The fresh cuts. That’s where it all begins.

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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American. •  "In losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself.” —NPR

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

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This dark, suspenseful tale by New York Times bestseller JaQuavis Coleman is an urban love story with an unforgettable conclusion. 

A man’s quest to escape his past life is an uphill battle. After seeking a Cuban voodoo doctor to receive a spiritual advantage on his upcoming court case, Saint opens Pandora’s box. The Santeria voodoo seemed to work, but at what cost?
 
Saint’s dangerous visit to Cuba comes with much more than he anticipated as he enters an underground secret society of high stakes gambling. He gets tangled in a web of heinous crimes, money games, and backstabbing. Torn between a woman he meets in Cuba and his wife at home, Saint finds himself embroiled in an intricate plan, which threatens his freedom and everything that he has worked for. Lines are crossed, both internationally and morally.

For a decade and a half, since she first appeared in the Birmingham Centre’s collective volume The Empire Strikes Back, Hazel Carby has been on the frontline of the debate over multicultural education in Britain and the US. This book brings together her most important and influential essays, ranging over such topics as the necessity for racially diverse school curricula, the construction of literary canons, Zora Neale Hurston’s portraits of “the Folk,” C.L.R. James and Trinidadian nationalism and black women blues artists, and the necessity for racially diverse school curricula. Carby’s analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary culture are invariably sharp and provocative, her political insights shrewd and often against the grain. A powerful intervention, Culture in Babylon will become a standard reference point in future debates over race, ethnicity and gender.

Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home. Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America stuck in the past and governed by a tradition of ominous rituals. Osira is considered blessed, but her luck changes when her children take off, she comes second to last in the Running of the Widows and her father flees when his name is called in the annual Moving On ceremony. Forced into a test of allegiance, Osira finds herself transported back in time, then into another realm where she must answer for crimes committed by Curdle Creek. Exile forces her to jump realms again, landing Osira even farther away from home, in rural England. Safe as long as she sticks to the rules, she quickly learns there are consequences for every kindness. Each jump could lead Osira anywhere but back home.

Curdle Creek is a unique, inventive novel exploring themes of home, belonging, motherhood and what we inherit from society. This American gothic offers a mash-up of the surreal and literary horror that will appeal to fans of Ring Shout, The Underground Railroad and Lovecraft Country. Yvonne Battle-Felton’s fever dream of a tale is enthralling, layered and quite unlike anything else.

Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Survival of the Thickest in Danielle Allen’s CURVY GIRL SUMMER, a smoking-hot, hilarious novel about the perils of online dating.

“There’s got to be an easier way than dating. I want the shortcut. I just want to find my person and start our lives together.”
After a one-night stand with her clingy ex, Aaliyah James has an epiphany: this ain’t it. She knows what she wants, and she’s ready to move past casual hookups, flings, and situationships.

But for her family, the clock is ticking―after all, she’s almost thirty. And when they imply that her personality (and her body) might be too big to land a man, she lets them know they’ve gone too far―and her (nonexistent) man loves her curves, thank you very much. Now, she has seven weeks to find the perfect boyfriend to rub in their faces at the big, fancy birthday celebration she’s been planning.

After her first blind date goes wrong, charming local bartender Ahmad Williamson consoles her with a drink and some playful banter. Aaliyah takes him up on his suggestion to use a dating app―but the more she sees of his warm, funny, and easygoing nature, the less she wants to check her DMs. Will her next swipe bring her closer to true love―or is her real match closer than she thinks?

An explosive ode to the bonds of sisterhood, the time-honored tradition of hide and seek, and the hilarious gas we pass. Everyone knows attics are the best place to play hide and seek on a rainy day. That is, unless your stomach is rumbling with a bubbly gas that you absolutely cannot keep in. When Baby sister lets one sneaky fart slip out, she betrays her hiding spot and begins the most phenomenal fart fest this attic has ever seen… A battle of the good, the bad and the stinky, young readers will surely revisit Cute Toot time and again, improving their various mouth fart sounds with each read.

D’Vaughn and Kris have six weeks to plan their dream wedding.

Their whole relationship is fake.

Instant I Do could be Kris Zavala’s big break. She’s right on the cusp of really making it as an influencer, so a stint on reality TV is the perfect chance to elevate her brand. And $100,000 wouldn’t hurt, either.

D’Vaughn Miller is just trying to break out of her shell. She’s sort of neglected to come out to her mom for years, so a big splashy fake wedding is just the excuse she needs.

All they have to do is convince their friends and family they’re getting married in six weeks. If anyone guesses they’re not for real, they’re out. Selling their chemistry on camera is surprisingly easy, and it’s still there when no one else is watching, which is an unexpected bonus. Winning this competition is going to be a piece of wedding cake.

But each week of the competition brings new challenges, and soon the prize money’s not the only thing at stake. A reality show isn’t the best place to create a solid foundation, and their fake wedding might just derail their relationship before it even starts.

Carina Adores is home to highly romantic contemporary love stories where LGBTQ+ characters find their happily-ever-afters. Discover a new Carina Adores book every month!

What’s February without a little sex?  Well, we can at least talk bout it!

Join Kindred Stories’ first D.A.T.E Night in partnership with Normal Anomaly as we discuss safer sex options when it comes to consent, communication, and pleasure. This is a safer space that will be facilitated by Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri & Jordan Edwards. Feel free to bring questions, comments, boos, and/or concerns. Kindred Stories staff member, Kadie,  will be in attendance offering titles that support the conversation! There will be complimentary cocktails and non-alcohol beverages and MUCH to discuss!

Email kadie@kindredstorieshtx.com if you have any questions.

About the facilitators:

Jordan J Edwards is a Program Director at the BQPlus center of Libertarian at the Normal Anomaly Initiative. Jordan serves the black queer plus community by increasing opportunities for sustainable employment, linkage to care services for those living with HIV and those interested in PrEP. His first experience with HIV was when he watched a family member pass away of AIDS complications in early 2000, talked down a friend down from planning attempted suicide from receiving an HIV positive diagnosis, but the shift in his life changed once he got his HIV positive results in 2013. Jordan became a Heavy Hitter Pride ambassador in 2019, received
an Emerging Leader award from AASOTF and Impulse Group Houston 2019. In 2021 he received the Phoenix Rising award from the Mahogany Project. He can be found in the Advocate, VoyageHouston, and Outsmart. Jordan spends most of his time being creative, gaming, in an animal shelter, and spending time with family and friends.

Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri Espeut (she/her/hers), Director of Programming, oversees the ancillary programs of The Normal Anomaly Initiative, including P.O.W.R. (Positives Organizing Wellness and Resilience), T.A.C. (Transgender Ally Collective), and Project Liberate.  Joelle’s social advocacy experience includes assisting with program planning and implementation as well as serving as Communications Manager for The Mahogany Project, Inc. since 2018.  Aside from her work with the Mahogany Project, Joelle has worked with AIDS United, GLAAD, Gilead/Compass Initiative, and Emory University.  She has also been awarded the Rising Star Phoenix Award in 2020. 

 When Joelle is not fighting for liberation and social justice, you can catch her thrift shopping, blogging/writing, or being a plant mom. 

It's May Masturbation Month!  So join Kindred Stories for another D.A.T.E. Night with Normal Anomaly as we discuss safer sex options when it comes to consent, communication, and pleasure. This is a safer space that will be facilitated by Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri & Jordan Edwards. Feel free to bring questions, comments, boos, and/or concerns. Kindred Stories staff member, Kadie,  will be in attendance offering titles that support the conversation! There will be complimentary cocktails and non-alcohol beverages and MUCH to discuss!

Email kadie@kindredstorieshtx.com if you have any questions.

About the facilitators:

Jordan J Edwards is a Program Director at the BQPlus center of Libertarian at the Normal Anomaly Initiative. Jordan serves the black queer plus community by increasing opportunities for sustainable employment, linkage to care services for those living with HIV and those interested in PrEP. His first experience with HIV was when he watched a family member pass away of AIDS complications in early 2000, talked down a friend down from planning attempted suicide from receiving an HIV positive diagnosis, but the shift in his life changed once he got his HIV positive results in 2013. Jordan became a Heavy Hitter Pride ambassador in 2019, received
an Emerging Leader award from AASOTF and Impulse Group Houston 2019. In 2021 he received the Phoenix Rising award from the Mahogany Project. He can be found in the Advocate, VoyageHouston, and Outsmart. Jordan spends most of his time being creative, gaming, in an animal shelter, and spending time with family and friends.

Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri Espeut (she/her/hers), Director of Programming, oversees the ancillary programs of The Normal Anomaly Initiative, including P.O.W.R. (Positives Organizing Wellness and Resilience), T.A.C. (Transgender Ally Collective), and Project Liberate.  Joelle’s social advocacy experience includes assisting with program planning and implementation as well as serving as Communications Manager for The Mahogany Project, Inc. since 2018.  Aside from her work with the Mahogany Project, Joelle has worked with AIDS United, GLAAD, Gilead/Compass Initiative, and Emory University.  She has also been awarded the Rising Star Phoenix Award in 2020. 

 When Joelle is not fighting for liberation and social justice, you can catch her thrift shopping, blogging/writing, or being a plant mom. 

The award-winning, platinum selling rapper, songwriter, and television personality shares her unforgettable story of coming of age in Miami, her inevitable rise to stardom, and her enduring legacy as a Hip-Hop Icon.

Growing up in the Liberty City area of Miami, Florida, Katrina “Trina” Taylor spent her childhood feeling relatively sheltered by her mother and stepfather. Trina and her mother had an unbreakable bond and Liberty City felt like a playground made just for her. And even at a young age, Trina knew what she wanted: to be a powerful, successful, and magnetic woman, a woman who was entirely self-reliant and independent. She dreamed of becoming a dancer, sexy and sparkling in the background of rap music videos she saw being filmed around Liberty City. Little did she know, she’d eventually be the star of the videos, and a founding Queen of rap.

In Da Baddest, Trina’s voice is, as always, powerful, insightful, witty, and provocative, while also showcasing her vulnerability and deep love for her family, home, and music. This evocative look into Trina’s upbringing and life as a rap icon proves why she is the blueprint, how she helped pave the way for the future of female rappers and hip-hop artists, and why no one but her can hold the title of “The Baddest B*tch.”

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With exclusive backstage stories from its legendary dancers and staff, and unprecedented access to its archives, Dance Theatre of Harlem is a striking chronicle of the company's amazing history, its fascinating daily workings, and the visionaries who made its legacy. Here you’ll discover how the company’s founders—African-American maestro Arthur Mitchell of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and Nordic-American Karel Shook of The Dutch National Ballet--created timeless works that challenged Eurocentric mainstream ballet head-on—and used new techniques to examine ongoing issues of power, beauty, myth, and the ever-changing definition of art itself.
 
Gaining prominence in the 1970s and 80s with a succession of triumphs—including its spectacular season at the Metropolitan Opera House—the company also gained fans and supporters that included Nelson Mandela, Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, Misty Copeland, Jessye Norman, and six American presidents. Dance Theatre of Harlem details this momentous era as well as the company's difficult years, its impressive recovery as it partnered with new media's most brilliant creators—and, in the wake of its 50th anniversary, amid a global pandemic, its evolution into a worldwide virtual performance space.
 
Alive with stunning photographs, including many from the legendary Marbeth, this incomparable book is a must-have for any lover of dance, art, culture, or history. 

The acclaimed, definitive and essential guide to 1980s Jamaican Dancehall—featuring hundreds of photographs with interviews and biographies

This widely admired book, back in print with a new introduction, captures a previously unseen era of musical culture, fashion and lifestyle. With unprecedented access to the incredibly vibrant music scene during this period, Beth Lesser’s photographs are a unique way into a previously hidden part of Jamaican culture. Born in the 1950s out of the neighborhood sound systems of Kingston, Dancehall grew to its height in the 1980s before a massive influx of drugs and guns made the scene too dangerous for many.
Dancehall is a culture that encompasses music, fashion, drugs, guns, art, community, technology and more. Many of today’s music and fashion styles can be traced back to Dancehall culture and continue to be influenced by it today.
Dancehall is an essential reference book for anyone interested in reggae, as well as a unique photographic and textual sourcebook of the musical, cultural and political life of Jamaica.
In the early 1980s, as Jamaica was in the throes of political and gang violence, Beth Lesser ventured where few other dared, documenting the producers, singers, DJs and sound systems who all made a living out of the slums of Kingston. This book is a thrilling record of the exciting, dangerous and vibrant world of Dancehall.

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Sassy worries that her too-large feet, too-long legs, and even her big mouth will keep her from her dream of becoming a star ballerina. So for now she's just dancing in the wings, watching from behind the curtain, and hoping that one day it will be her turn to shimmer in the spotlight. When the director of an important dance festival comes to audition her class, Sassy's first attempts to get his attention are, well, a little wobbly. But Sassy just knows, somehow, that this is her time to step out from those wings, and make her mark on the world. Actress/choreographer Debbie Allen and Kadir Nelson collaborated on Brothers of the Knight, about which School Library Journal raved, "the strutting high-stepping brothers are full of individuality, attitude, and movement."

Her parents had big plans for her life. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Zim Flores was uprooted from her community as a young girl, marking the beginning of her quest for true identity. Though she experienced unprecedented worldly success as a teenager and young adult, Zim declares that even when we feel pressured by the world around us, our true identity is never at risk.

In Dare to Bloom, Zim offers practical and hard-won truths about:

• How to reclaim your true identity
• How to surrender your desired outcomes to God
• How to move forward after broken friendships
• How to find comfort during your darkest hours
• How to navigate new beginnings with hope for whatever is next
• How to joyfully participate in your own story--even when you don't know what the future holds

A crucial book that calls for community, solidarity, and joy, even in—especially in—these dark days

In his debut work of nonfiction, award-winning poet Roger Reeves finds new meaning in silence, protest, fugitivity, freedom, and ecstasy. Braiding memoir, theory, and criticism, Reeves juxtaposes the images of an opera singer breaking the state-mandated silence curfew by singing out into the streets of Santiago, Chile, and a father teaching his daughter to laugh out loud at the planes dropping bombs on them in Aleppo, Syria. He describes the history of the hush harbor—places where enslaved people could steal away to find silence and court ecstasy, to the side of their impossible conditions. In other essays, Reeves highlights a chapter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved to locate common purpose between Black and Indigenous peoples; he visits the realities of enslaved people on McLeod Plantation, where some of the descendants of those formerly enslaved lived into the 1990s; and he explores his own family history, his learning to read closely through the Pentecostal church tradition, and his passing on of reading as a pleasure, freedom, and solace to his daughter, who is frightened the police will gun them down.

Together, these groundbreaking essays build a profound vision for how to see and experience the world in our present moment, and how to strive toward an alternative existence in intentional community underground. “The peace we fight and search for,” Reeves writes, “begins and ends with being still.”

Du Bois' foundational investigation of social justice and civil rights by means of essay, poetry, prayer and short science fiction.

A new edition with a new introduction, Du Bois' radical text is a rare statement of values formed around the vision of a collective life, where the humanity of black women and men is treated with dignity and equality. He expresses his themes through a series of literary forms: polemic essay, spirituals, poetry and short science fiction, each of which forms a pulse of social justice from a time when a true understanding of intersections between poverty, work, racism and feminism was rare. A new title in the Foundations of Black Science Fiction series.

Spanning time, styles, and traditions, a dazzling collection of essential works from 140 Latine writers, scholars, and activists from across the world—from warrior poet Audre Lorde to novelist Edwidge Danticat and performer and author Elizabeth Acevedo and artist/poet Cecilia Vicuña—gathered in one magnificent volume.

Daughters of Latin America collects the intergenerational voices of Latine women across time and space, capturing the power, strength, and creativity of these visionary writers, leaders, scholars, and activists—including 24 Indigenous voices. Several authors featured are translated into English for the first time. Grammy, National Book Award, Cervantes, and Pulitzer Prize winners as well as a Nobel Laureate and the next generation of literary voices are among the stars of this essential collection, women whose work inspires and transforms us.

An eclectic and inclusive time capsule spanning centuries, genres, and geographical and linguistic diversity, Daughters of Latin America is divided into 13 parts representing the 13 Mayan Moons, each cycle honoring a different theme. Within its pages are poems from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón and celebrated Cervantes Prize–winner Dulce María Loynaz; lyric essays from New York Times bestselling author Naima Coster, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Guggenheim Fellow Maryse Condé; rousing speeches from U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Lencan Indigenous land and water protector Berta Caceres; and a transcendent Mazatec chant from shaman and poet María Sabina testifying to the power of language as a cure, which opens the book.

More than a collection of writings, Daughters of Latin America is a resurrection of ancestral literary inheritance as well as a celebration of the rising voices encouraged and nurtured by those who came before them. 

In addition to those mentioned above, contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Julia Alvarez, Albalucia Angel, Marie Arana, Ruth Behar, Gioconda Belli, Miluska Benavides, Carmen Bouollosa, Norma Cantú, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Angie Cruz, Edwidge Danticat, Julia de Burgos, Lila Downs, Laura Esquivel, Conceição Evaristo, Mayra Santos Febres, Sara Gallardo, Cristina Rivera Garza, Reyna Grande, Sonia Guiñasaca, Georgina Herrera, María Hinojosa, Claudia Salazar Jimenez, Jamaica Kincaid, María Clara Sharupi Jua, Amada Libertad, Josefina López, Gabriela Mistral, Celeste Mohammed, Cherrié Moraga, Angela Morales, Nancy Morejón, Anaïs Nin, Achy Obejas, Alejandra Pizarnik, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Elena Poniatowska, Laura Restrepo, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Mikeas Sánchez, Esmeralda Santiago, Rita Laura Segato, Ana María Shua, Natalia Toledo, Julia Wong, Elisabet Velasquez, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Helena María Viramontes, and many more.

In the future, nuclear war has destroyed nearly all humankind. An alien race intervenes, saving the small group of survivors from certain death. But their salvation comes at a cost.

The Oankali are able to read and mutate genetic code, and they use these skills for their own survival, interbreeding with new species to constantly adapt and evolve. They value the intelligence they see in humankind but also know that the species -- rigidly bound to destructive social hierarchies -- is destined for failure. They are determined that the only way forward is for the two races to produce a new hybrid species -- and they will not tolerate rebellion.

Akin looks like an ordinary human child. But as the first true human-alien hybrid, he is born understanding language, then starts to form sentences at two months old. He can see at a molecular level and kill with a touch. More powerful than any human or Oankali, he will be the architect of both races' future. But before he can carry this new species into the stars, Akin must reconcile with his own heritage in a world already torn in two.

Dawoud Bey focuses on the landscape to create a portrait of the early African American presence in the United States.

Renowned for his Harlem street scenes and expressive portraits, Dawoud Bey continues his ongoing series on African American history. Elegy brings together Bey’s three landscape series to date—Night Coming Tenderly, Black  (2017); In This Here Place  (2021); and Stony the Road (2023)—elucidating the deep historical memory still embedded in the geography of the United States. Bey takes viewers to the historic Richmond Slave Trail in Virginia, where Africans were marched onto auction blocks; to the plantations of Louisiana, where they labored; and along the last stages of the Underground Railroad in Ohio, where fugitives sought self-emancipation. Essays by the exhibition’s curator, Valerie Cassel Oliver, and scholars LeRonn P. Brooks, Imani Perry, and Christina Sharpe illuminate the work. By interweaving these bodies of work into an elegy in three movements, Bey doesn’t merely evoke history, he retells it through historically grounded images that challenge viewers to go beyond seeing and imagine lived experiences. 

Copublished by Aperture and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

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In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters—caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York—overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.

Sami Ellis’s Dead Girls Walking is a shocking, spine-chilling YA horror slasher about a girl searching for her dead mother’s body at the summer camp that was once her serial killer father’s home—perfect for fans of Friday the 13th and White Smoke.
 
Temple Baker knows that evil runs in her blood. Her father is the North Point Killer, an infamous serial killer known for how he marked each of his victims with a brand. He was convicted for murdering 20 people and was the talk of countless true crime blogs for years. Some say he was possessed by a demon. Some say that they never found all his victims. Some say that even though he’s now behind bars, people are still dying in the woods. Despite everything though, Temple never believed that her dad killed her mom. But when he confesses to that crime while on death row, she has no choice but to return to his old hunting grounds to try see if she can find a body and prove it.
 
Turns out, the farm that was once her father’s hunting grounds and her home has been turned into an overnight camp for queer, horror-obsessed girls. So Temple poses as a camp counselor to go digging in the woods. While she’s not used to hanging out with girls her own age and feels ambivalent at best about these true crime enthusiasts, she tries her best to fit in and keep her true identity hidden.
 
But when a girl turns up dead in the woods, she fears that one of her father’s “fans” might be mimicking his crimes. As Temple tries to uncover the truth and keep the campers safe, she comes to realize that there may be something stranger and more sinister at work—and that her father may not have been the only monster in these woods.