“Words carry the dead like henchmen,” in Joshua Burton’s extraordinary debut volume, Grace Engine. These spare and powerful poems are like pallbearers, like eulogists, like survivors, like battered souls hoping and dreaming for a future that may never be. Grappling head-on with the history of lynchings, mental illness, and the endurance of black bodies and psyches against impossible odds, Burton writes, “I spent so many years being afraid to be black, that now / I am only afraid of silence, / / or the silence that it brings.”

Burton experiments with spaces, absences, and forms in navigating the tensions between shame and accountability, guilt and forgiveness, to understand how one finds the ability to cope under the worst of conditions. With patience and ferocity, he delves into generational and familial trauma to question whether black strength is inherent to blackness and to build a mechanism to survive and heal.
 
I love all the dead,
both at the moment they unwed 

themselves of shame
and before that.
—Excerpt from “Grace Engine”

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer

This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.
Grace Wales Bonner (born 1990) is the founder and artistic director of Wales Bonner. While she sees herself primarily as a researcher, her practice extends to curation, filmmaking and publishing. In 2019 she curated her first institutional exhibition, A Time for New Dreams, at the Serpentine Gallery, London. She has received numerous awards, including the LVMH Young Designer Prize (2016) and the CFDA International Men’s Designer of the Year (2021). She has also collaborated with brands including Adidas and Dior.

Get grooving, moving, and learning with Gracie’s Corner!

Gracie and friends say good morning and get ready for the day! Inspired by the megapopular “Good Morning Song,” kids will love following along with Gracie as she brushes her teeth, fluffs her hair, and starts her day with a BIIIG smile on her face! The perfect get-ready anthem for any—and every—day.

Features a helpful Good Morning guide in the back to break morning routines down into easy-to-follow steps!

* Upbeat and inspirational, this is the perfect picture book to get kids excited for their mornings and to start their days on a positive note!
* First of its kind Gracie’s Corner picture book adaptation is perfect to read (or sing!) along with your child’s favorite Gracie’s Corner YouTube video!  
* Turn everyday routines—like teeth brushing, hair combing, and more!—into fun for kids with this bright and colorful picture book.
* Created by family team Graceyn, Javoris, and Arlene Hollingsworth,Gracie’s Corner focuses on centering children of color in the edutainment industry and making learning a fun, positive experience.

Get grooving, moving, and learning with Gracie’s Corner!

What sound does a letter make? Using familiar rhythms from the smash hit the "Phonics Song,” this perfect-to-hold board book adaptation breaks down the alphabet and letter sounds into easy-to-remember word examples and bright and bold art in the style of Gracie’s Corner. From “elephant” to “umbrella,” kids will be breaking it down and sounding it out in no time!

* Features the lyrics of an easy, catchy, and educational song! Teach kids the alphabet in a fun-filled way that they’re sure to love. 
* First of its kind Gracie’s Corner board book adaptation is perfect to read (or sing!) along with your child’s favorite Gracie’s Corner YouTube video!
* Vibrant illustrations and fan-favorite lyrics will make kids want to read this over and over, aiding in memorization along the way!
* Created by family team Graceyn, Javoris, and Arlene Hollingsworth,Gracie’s Corner focuses on centering children of color in the edutainment industry and making learning a fun, positive experience.

“A fine addition to book collections about families, food, counting, and joyous gatherings." —The Horn Book

This sweet, rhyming-counting board book introduces young readers to numbers one through fifteen as Grandma’s family and friends fill her tiny house on Brown Street. Neighbors, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and grandkids crowd into the house and pile it high with treats for a family feast.
 
But when the walls begin to bulge and nobody has space enough to eat, one clever grandchild knows exactly what to do.

*ships in 7-10 business days

A little girl learns Jamaican recipes and self-confidence from her Granny in this warm, sweet picture book debut.

Shelly-Ann lives with her Granny on the beautiful island of Jamaica. When Shelly-Ann becomes hungry, she asks her Granny for something to eat. Granny tells her “Gyal, you betta can cook!” and teaches Shelly-Ann how to get in touch with her Jamaican roots through the process of cooking.

As Shelly-Ann tries each recipe, everything goes wrong. But when Granny is too tired to cook one morning, Shelly-Ann will have to find the courage to try one more time and prepare the perfect Jamaican breakfast.

Accompanied by Ken Daley's vibrant, sun-soaked artwork, Sadé Smith's debut picture book Granny's Kitchen is the perfect readaloud for budding chefs everywhere.

NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB's November 2023 Must Read Books • LIBRARY JOURNAL EDITOR PICK •

“A groundbreaking book, both bold in its premise and precise in its exploration of systemic racism in the workplace. This could not be a more urgent and necessary blueprint for progress.”—Bakari Sellers, New York Times bestselling author of My Vanishing Country

“Provides a trailblazing antiracist framework for us all.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

"This vital and accessible study is a must-read for anyone concerned with workplace equality."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

A leading sociologist reveals why racial inequality persists in the workplace despite today’s multi-billion-dollar diversity industry—and provides actionable solutions for creating a truly equitable, multiracial future.

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to advancement and mobility—ignored and failed Black people. While explicit discrimination no longer occurs, and organizations make internal and public pledges to honor and achieve “diversity,” inequities persist through what Adia Harvey Wingfield calls the “gray areas:” the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that are now more important than ever. The reality is that Black employees are less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions.

Wingfield has spent a decade examining inequality in the workplace, interviewing over two hundred Black subjects across professions about their work lives. In Gray Areas, she introduces seven of them: Alex, a worker in the gig economy Max, an emergency medicine doctor; Constance, a chemical engineer; Brian, a filmmaker; Amalia, a journalist; Darren, a corporate vice president; and Kevin, who works for a nonprofit.

In this accessible and important antiracist work, Wingfield chronicles their experiences and blends them with history and surprising data that starkly show how old models of work are outdated and detrimental. She demonstrates the scope and breadth of gray areas and offers key insights and suggestions for how they can be fixed, including shifting hiring practices to include Black workers; rethinking organizational cultures to centralize Black employees’ experience; and establishing pathways that move capable Black candidates into leadership roles. These reforms would create workplaces that reflect America’s increasingly diverse population—professionals whose needs organizations today are ill-prepared to meet.

It’s time to prepare for a truly equitable, multiracial future and move our culture forward. To do so, we must address the gray areas in our workspaces today. This definitive work shows us how.

Gray Areas includes 15 black-and-white images and a photo insert.

In this thrilling mystery from "master of craft and narrative" Walter Mosley (National Book Foundation), Detective Easy Rawlins has settled into the happy rhythm of his new life when a dark siren from his past returns and threatens to destroy the peace he's fought for.

The name Easy Rawlins stirs excitement in the hearts of readers and fear in the hearts of his foes. His success has bought him a thriving detective agency, with its first female detective; a remote home, shared with children and pets and lovers, high atop the hills overlooking gritty Los Angeles; and more trouble, more problems, and more threat to those whom he loves. In other words, he’s still beset on all sides.
 
A number of below-the-law powerbrokers plead with Easy to locate a mysterious, dangerous woman—Lutisha James, though she’s gone by another name that Easy will immediately recognize. 1970s Los Angeles is a transient city of delicate, violent balances, and Lutisha has disturbed that. She also has a secret that will upend Easy’s own life, painfully closer to home.

A gripping, elegant debut novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.

An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.

Dive in to an exciting nonfiction graphic novel series about some of the greatest Black lives in history!

This fun and accessible graphic novel for middle grade readers brings to light the lives of great but lesser-known Black scientists. Great Minds of Science is a kid-friendly introduction to some of the greatest scientists in history—doctors, engineers, mathematicians, and biologists.

Each of them faced challenges as they rose to the top of their professions, but they didn’t back down. They kept experimenting and questioning and learning, and they made significant contributions in each of their scientific fields.

Black Lives is the new graphic novel series from award-winning author Tonya Bolden and illustrator David Wilkerson that celebrates the lives of Black innovators and legends and helps bring these histories to life.

Celebrate the lives and contributions of Black scientists throughout history with the inspiring Great Minds of Science.

Grief expert Marisa Renee Lee’s incisive and compassionate guide on how to manage grief after the loss of a loved one, with special insight for women and African American communities, which also provides timely wisdom and care for the millions who have suffered loss during the pandemic

In Grief is Love, author Marisa Renee Lee reveals that healing does not mean moving on—healing means learning to acknowledge and create space for your grief. She guides you through the pain of early grief and shows you how to to honor your loss. It’s common to plow through our feelings in the name of being “OK,” but grief is so inextricably tied to love that you don’t just “get over it.” Grief is Love is about making space for the transformation that this constant state of learning requires. It is about learning to love yourself and the one you lost with the same depth, passion, joy, and commitment you did when they were alive, perhaps even more.
 
Lee shows that there isn’t only one way to grieve, and so your expression of it should be unique. She shepherds you through your grief as it arises and falls again and again. The transformation we each undergo after loss is the indelible imprint of the people we love on our lives, which is the true meaning of legacy. Healing after loss is not about burying pain but about acknowledging it and allowing grief to move through you in order to be whole. How do you manage the holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries? How do you get through the next year or even tomorrow?
 
In beautiful, compassionate prose, Lee elegantly offers wisdom about what it means to authentically and defiantly claim space for these complicated feelings and emotions. And Lee is no stranger to grief herself, after losing her mother, her fertility, a pregnancy, and, most recently, a cousin to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this book, she also explores the unique impact of grief on Black people, Black women in particular, and reveals the key factors that proper healing requires: acknowledgement, rest, community, reflection, support, care and more.
 
At its core, Grief is Love explores what comes after death, and shows us that if we are able to own and honor what we’ve lost, we can have a beautiful and joyful life in the midst of grief. 

Attend a grief focused writing workshop with award winning author, Renee Watson in honor of the release of All the Blues in Sky! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, February, 11 @ 7PM

Where: 2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004

How:  RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming

ABOUT THE BOOK

Sage's thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn't predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life—and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all.

In accessible, engaging verse and prose, this is a story of a girl's journey to heal, grow, and forgive herself. To read it is to see how many shades there are in grief, and to know that someone understands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novel, Piecing Me
Together, received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books include
the Ryan Hart series, Some Places More Than Others, This Side of Home, What Momma
Left Me, Betty Before X, cowritten with Ilyasah Shabazz, Watch Us Rise, cowritten with
Ellen Hagan, and Love Is a Revolution, as well as acclaimed picture books: Maya's Song,

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, written with Nikole Hannah-Jones, A Place Where
Hurricanes Happen, and Harlem's Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP
Image Award. Renée splits her time between Portland, Oregon and New York City.
http://www.reneewatson.net | @harlemportland (Instagram) | @reneewauthor (X)

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

A tale of what happens when we can no longer ignore what has been lost in this world.

Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.

Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.

Resisting an irresistible force wears you down and turns you out.I know.I've been doing it for years.I may not have a musical gift of my own, but I've got a nose for talent and an eye for the extraordinary.And Marlon James - Grip to his fans - is nothing short of extraordinary.Years ago, we strung together a few magical nights, but I keep those memories in a locked drawer and I've thrown away the key.All that's left is friendship and work. He's on the verge of unimaginable fame, all his dreams poised to come true.I manage his career, but I can't seem to manage my heart. It's wild, reckless, disobedient.And it remembers all the things I want to forget.

Steve Cannon’s cult classic novel returns to print

Despite decades of notoriety as one of the “filthiest books in the world,” Steve Cannon’s first and only piece of longform fiction, Groove, Bang and Jive Around, has hardly been read since first being published in 1969. In the words of American poet Ishmael Reed, Cannon’s debut work inspired a generation by breaking with staid literary modernism. Its publication “signaled a resurfacing of the irreverent, underground trickster tradition of Black orature.” This erotic farce follows Annette, a teenage runaway, from the outhouse of a New Orleans juke joint to the psychedelic paradise of Oo-bla-dee―an idyllic country possibly founded by Dizzy Gillespie―by way of bacchanalian voodoo ritual. As Ophelia Press, its original publisher, wrote, Groove, Bang and Jive Around is an absolute necessity “for everyone who wants to know where and how the action takes place in Sex and Soul.”
Steve Cannon (1935–2019) moved to New York City in 1962 and joined the Umbra Workshop. He worked with and was a mentor to many artists and writers. In 1990 he founded the magazine and gallery A Gathering of the Tribes in New York City’s East Village.

The first of two steamy and entertaining romance novels, published under the beloved and distinguished author’s real name for the first time

You never know what’s going on behind someone’s groove.

New York City, April 2002: Geneva, Crystal, Noah, and Chevy, a close friend group, are all mid-thirty, flirty—and ready to embrace the heat of the summer.

But behind closed doors, each of them has struggles of their own: Geneva keeps accidentally falling for the charms of her good-for-nothing ex-husband; Crystal is a high-flying executive with a picture-perfect life and a boyfriend who might just be too good to be true; Noah is attempting to keep the spark alive between him and his European boyfriend, but the flames of temptation keep catching fire in the most unexpected of places; and then there’s Chevy, who couldn’t care less about love and only wants a life of champagne dinners and designer bags, no matter the cost.

But as the city heats up and tensions keep bubbling under the surface, Chevy gets entangled with a hot and mysterious stranger. The group must come together to save their friend before it’s too late—and before secrets break their forever friendship.

*ships or ready to pick up in 7 - 10 business days*

A funny, relatable middle school drama about two Colombian American girls who have always been BFFs—until sixth grade turns everything upside down.

Luchy Zapata is starting middle school, and she’s muy excited. She and her two best friends, Cami and Mateo, will finally be at the same school. Luchy and Mateo will be in art class together, and she and Cami can try out for the same soccer team! As long as they’re all together, Luchy can handle anything.

But Cami has been acting weird ever since she got back from visiting family in Colombia. She’s making new, “cool” friends who just seem mean. And suddenly, everything about Luchy and Mateo is too immature for her.

Luchy is determined to help Cami remember how special their friendship is. They’ve been BFFs their whole lives, and that can’t just disappear in a poof of glitter! But…what if Cami doesn’t even want to be friends anymore?

Korey Fields is dead.

When Enchanted Jones wakes with blood on her hands and zero memory of the previous night, no one—the police and Korey’s fans included—has more questions than she does. All she really knows is that this isn’t how things are supposed to be. Korey was Enchanted’s ticket to stardom.

Before there was a dead body, Enchanted was an aspiring singer, struggling with her tight-knit family’s recent move to the suburbs while trying to find her place as one of the few black girls in high school. But then legendary R&B artist Korey Fields spots her at an audition, and suddenly her dream of being a professional singer takes flight.

Enchanted is dazzled by Korey’s luxurious life but soon her dream turns into a nightmare. Behind Korey’s charm and star power lurks a dark side; one that wants to control her every move with rage and consequences. Except now he’s dead and the police are at the door. Who killed Korey Fields?

All signs point to Enchanted.

Oh you grown grown?! Celebrate another year around the sun with this #relatable birthday message and festive design.

Interior message reads: Happy Birthday!

Size: A6 4.5 x 6.25 in.

Each card comes with a 100% recycled A6 kraft envelope.

Printing Specs: Each card has been printed digitally with 100% non-toxic toner on 100% PCW Recycled, PCF Chlorine Free paper.

Design by Ania Nicole.

“This is a tender, deeply perceptive tale of what kin owes kin, and how we might work to mend old wounds together.”—Elle

In this stunning debut novel, four generations of complex Black women contend with motherhood and daughterhood, generational trauma and the deeply ingrained tensions and wounds that divide them as they redefine happiness and healing for themselves.

Erudite Evelyn, her cynical daughter Charlotte, and Charlotte’s optimistic daughter Corinna see the world very differently. Though they love each other deeply, it’s no wonder that their personalities often clash. But their conflicts go deeper than run-of-the-mill disagreements. Here, there is deep, dark resentment for past and present hurt.  

When Corinna gives birth to her own daughter, Camille, the beautiful, intelligent little girl offers this trio of mothers something they all need: hope, joy, and an opportunity to reconcile. They decide to work together to raise their collective daughter with the tenderness and empathy they missed in their own relationships. Yet despite their best intentions, they cannot agree on what that means.

After Camille eventually leaves her mother and grandmother in rural Tennessee for a more cosmopolitan life in Washington, DC with her great-grandmother, it’s unclear whether this complex and self-contained girl will thrive or be overwhelmed by the fears and dreams of three generations she carries. As she grows into a gutsy young woman, Camille must decide for herself what happiness will look like.

 In masterful, elegant prose, debut novelist Sarai Johnson has created a rich and moving portrait of Black women’s lives today.

In the final novel in the "timely and evocative" (NPR) Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Attica Locke, Darren Matthews is pulled out of an early retirement to investigate the disappearance of a Black college student from an all-white sorority and soon finds nothing is as it seems.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate.

Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother.

In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life’s purpose as he’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.

The first major Gullah Geechee cookbook from “the matriarch of Edisto Island,” who provides delicious recipes and the history of an overlooked American community.

The history of the Gullah and Geechee people stretches back centuries, when enslaved members of this community were historically isolated from the rest of the South because of their location on the Sea Islands of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Today, this Lowcountry community represents the most direct living link to the traditional culture, language, and foodways of their West African ancestors.

Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, written by Emily Meggett, the matriarch of Edisto Island, is the preeminent Gullah cookbook. At 89 years old, and with more than 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Meggett is a respected elder in the Gullah community of South Carolina. She has lived on the island all her life, and even at her age, still cooks for hundreds of people out of her hallowed home kitchen. Her house is a place of pilgrimage for anyone with an interest in Gullah Geechee food. Meggett’s Gullah food is rich and flavorful, though it is also often lighter and more seasonal than other types of Southern cooking. Heirloom rice, fresh-caught seafood, local game, and vegetables are key to her recipes for regional delicacies like fried oysters, collard greens, and stone-ground grits. This cookbook includes not only delicious and accessible recipes, but also snippets of the Meggett family history on Edisto Island, which stretches back into the 19th century. Rich in both flavor and history, Meggett’s Gullah Geechee Home Cooking is a testament to the syncretism of West African and American cultures that makes her home of Edisto Island so unique.

Winner of the 2020 Cave Canem Prize

Gumbo Ya Ya, Aurielle Marie’s stunning debut, is a cauldron of hearty poems exploring race, gender, desire, and violence in the lives of Black gxrls, soaring against the backdrop of a contemporary South. These poems are loud, risky, and unapologetically rooted in the glory of Black gxrlhood. The collection opens with a heartrending indictment of injustice. What follows is a striking reimagination of the world, one where no Black gxrl dies “by the barrel of the law” or “for loving another Black gxrl.” Part familial archival, part map of Black resistance, Gumbo Ya Ya catalogs the wide gamut of Black life at its intersections, with punching cultural commentary and a poetic voice that holds tenderness and sharpness in tandem. It asks us to chew upon both the rich meat and the tough gristle, and in doing so we walk away more whole than we began and thoroughly satisfied.

Here are over 800 haiku by Richard Wright, one of the early forceful and eloquent spokesmen for black Americans, author of the acclaimed Native Son and Black Boy.

Wright discovered the haiku in the last eighteen months of life. He attempted to capture, through his sensibility as an African-American, the elusive Zen discipline and beauty in depicting man’s relationship, not only to his fellow man as he had in the raw and forceful prose of his fiction, but to the natural world. In all, he wrote over 4,000 haiku.

Here are the 817 he personally chose; Wright’s haiku, disciplined and steeped in beauty, display a universality that transcends both race and color without ever denying them. Wright wrote his haiku obsessively—in bed, in cafes, in restaurants, in both Paris and the French countryside. They offered him a new form of expression and a new vision: with the threat of death constantly before him, he found in them inspiration, beauty, and insights.

Fighting illness and frequently bedridden, deeply upset by the recent loss of his mother, Ella, Wright continued, as his daughter notes in her introduction, “to spin these poems of light out of the gathering darkness.”

*Ships in 7-10 business days*

Zuri's hair has a mind of its own. It kinks, coils, and curls every which way. Zuri knows it's beautiful. When Daddy steps in to style it for an extra special occasion, he has a lot to learn. But he LOVES his Zuri, and he'll do anything to make her -- and her hair -- happy.

Tender and empowering, Hair Love is an ode to loving your natural hair -- and a celebration of daddies and daughters everywhere.

An alphabet board book inspired by the bestselling HAIR LOVE, from the original award–winning author and illustrator duo—and perfect for baby gift baskets.

A is for Afro, N is for Natural, and W is for Waves. Letter by letter, follow Zuri and her father in their joy-filled journey through the kinks and curls of Black hair. 

This 7x7 board book is perfect as a baby gift, for existing fans of HAIR LOVE, young readers embracing their natural hair, and toddlers learning their ABCs!

Five female Afghan poets wield language to combat the loneliness, absurdity, and claustrophobia of life in a war-torn country and its diaspora. There are “hypnotic, long beards” tangled with mass extinctions; hateful men burning grapevines; black blindfolds; jinn in chadors; and condoms advertised every eight minutes on TV. Interspersing these are tender moments: one poet describes brushing her daughter’s hair, while another imagines a tree growing at the center of a room, undisturbed by the bombs outside. In the wake of the Taliban’s escalating war on Afghan women’s rights, Hair on Fire is a blazing tribute to a group of exceptional poetesses and a reminder of what we lose when voices are silenced.