The collected photographic works of Eddie Otchere, Britain's foremost chronicler of Black youth culture.

Spirit Behind the Lens takes the reader into the visual world of one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic photographers: Eddie Otchere.

Hailing from the epicentre of London’s jungle scene, this book documents how Otchere crafted the visual identities of house, garage, jungle, drum n bass and hip-hop, working with artists including Biggie Smalls, Wu-Tang Clan, Lil Louis, So Solid Crew, Kemet Crew, Goldie and Black Star.

Accompanied by a written memoir in which Otchere outlines his practice, influence and personal history, Spirit Behind the Lens is not only a history of Black culture told through the work of its greatest and most influential photographer, but a manual on how to navigate the emotional aspects of being creative and an exploration of the romance of photography itself.

A thoughtful guide to ancestral veneration, with a focus on the importance of reclaiming African Spiritual practices as an act of liberation.

Your ancestors remember you. Do you remember them? They have been waiting for this very moment in time.

In this book, Ifa and Orisa priestess Ehime Ora shares the importance of connection to the ancestors, and to one’s spiritual roots. There’s a certain type of radical healing that takes place when we recommend to our ancestral veneration and follow through with their wisdom.

Providing healing through the written word, Ehime walks you though the reclamation of African Spiritual practices, discussing the spiritual renaissance occurring in the African community, and includes interviews with elders of the rich traditions. She also provides tangible spiritual tools so that you can incorporate ancestral veneration in your life: how to properly set up and work with an ancestral altar, the importance of spiritual hygiene, and bringing forth the concept of the ori, or the higher self.

A powerful picture book biography of Stacey Abrams, politician, voters’ rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, that shows how Abrams’s fight for voters’ rights was inspired by luminaries before her, such as Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer. Brilliant artwork from Laura Freeman, Coretta Scott King Honoree for Hidden Figures, brings Stacey’s journey to life. Perfect for fans of Kamala Harris: Rooted In Justice by Nikki Grimes and I Dissent by Debbie Levy.

Read about Stacey Abrams, politician and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, in this poetic picture book that follows Abrams’s fight for voters’ rights, narrated by Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Septima Poinsette Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer.

“Sometimes she would light the way. Sometimes her way would be lit by others…”

Stacey Abrams was always destined for big things because she always imagined more. Now she protects the least powerful, works toward making voting fair and easy, and demands better for Georgia and every other state in this nation. Stacey Abrams’s determination, perseverance, and courage will inspire younger generations to make meaningful change in the world.

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An empowering debut picture book from iconic voting rights advocate and #1 New York Times bestselling author, Stacey Abrams, about a little girl who discovers the power of words after competing in a spelling bee—inspired by Stacey’s own childhood.

Stacey is a little girl who loves words more than anything. She loves reading them, sounding them out, and finding comfort in them when things are hard. 

But when her teacher chooses her to compete in the local spelling bee, she isn’t as excited as she thought she’d be. What if she messes up? Or worse, if she can’t bring herself to speak up, like sometimes happens when facing bullies at school? 

Stacey will learn that win or lose . . her words are powerful, and sometimes perseverance is the most important word of all. 

The companion to the #1 New York Times bestseller and NAACP Image Award winner Stacey's Extraordinary Words, from political leader Stacey Abrams and artist Kitt Thomas.

Stacey’s favorite day of the week is Thursday, when the whole class goes to the library and she gets to lose herself in her beloved books.

On one of these special days, Stacey discovers that a new student named Julie has trouble reading in English, so they begin sharing books and stories to practice. Soon, more students start to join them.

Books take the group on magical adventures and reveal other worlds and cultures—but best of all, they bring them together as friends.

This is another inspiring tale, based on a true story from Stacey Abrams’s childhood, about the life-changing power of books.

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Brave, clear-eyed, and passionate, Stakes Is High is the book we need to guide us past crisis mode and through an uncertain future.

The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our path, the promise that hard work and determination will carry us to freedom. But in Stakes Is High, Mychal Denzel Smith confronts the shortcomings of these stories -- and with the American Dream itself -- and calls on us to live up to the principles we profess but fail to realize.

RACE. Uh-oh. The R-word.
But actually talking about race is one of the most important things to learn how to do.

Adapted from the groundbreaking bestseller Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, this book takes readers on a journey from present to past and back again. Kids will discover where racist ideas came from, identify how they impact America today, and meet those who have fought racism with antiracism. Along the way, they’ll learn how to identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their own lives.

A striking graphic novel edition of the National Book Award-winning history of how racist ideas have shaped American life—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist.

Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it.

In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.

The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.

Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.

Paperback Release: January 7, 2025

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.

Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.

In this vital and accessible survey, a prominent activist for racial justice answers questions from real children, giving them the tools and the confidence to shape a more just society.

Using questions canvassed from children around the United Kingdom as her framework, writer, activist, engineer, and broadcaster Yassmin Abdel-Magied provides a clear overview of racism’s history, what it looks like today, and how to recognize, resist, and disrupt racist conversations and attitudes that can appear anywhere. This book is a practical guide for taking actionable steps, but it acknowledges that talking about racism invites complex feelings and offers tips and tactics for expressing those emotions safely, stepping back when needed, and prioritizing self-care. The book’s warm and assured tone, friendly illustrations, and supplementary charts, sidebars, infographics, and glossary offer an authentic way to open a dialogue with middle-grade readers, providing an eloquent call to nurture compassion and change, challenge inequality, and strive toward racial justice for all.

“A breakthrough... this force of nature is becoming one of our fiercest voices in the new generation of African-American thinkers.” -- Essence

Bestselling author Brittney Cooper is a leading Black feminist voice of our times. From her New York Times bestseller Eloquent Rage, selected by Emma Watson as an "Our Shared Shelf Book," to her frequent guest appearances on MSNBC, to her regular features on Cosmopolitan.com and Salon.com, and her TED Talk with over 800K views, there's no question Brittney Cooper is one of the most preeminent Black influencers of today. Now, this author, professor, activist, and cultural critic brings her immense talents to the children's space with a seven-title publishing deal at Scholastic, spanning from picture books to middle grade, and launching with this momentous picture book debut: Stand Up!

Stand Up! tells the story of ten historic female figures who changed the world by standing up for what's right, including legendary Civil Rights activists like Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks and spanning to contemporary role models like Bree Newsome, who removed the confederate flag from the South Carolina state house grounds, and Mari Copeny, a youth activist who fought for clean water in Flint, Michigan. This inspirational biographical collection will live side by side with bestselling classics like Little Leaders and She Persisted yet offers a wholly original, powerful new voice and approach that make this story so singular, personal, and groundbreaking. Cooper's enlightening text depicts both famous and unsung Black women who took a stand and made the world a better place for future generations. Each heroic figure is interconnected by a united quest for equity, and offers young readers a stirring, inspirational call to action, reminding them that they are mighty too, and can be forces for change when they stand up!

An “enthralling” (Michael Kazin, Washington Post) account of America’s shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technological innovation made possible dramatic increases in industrial and agricultural productivity; by 1919, per-capita gross national product had soared. But this new wealth and new power were not distributed evenly. In this landmark work—with continued resonance for our times—acclaimed historian Nell Irvin Painter illuminates the class, economic, and political conflicts that defined the Progressive era. Demonstrating the ways in which racial and social hierarchies were interwoven with reform movements, she offers a lively and comprehensive view of Americans, rich and working-class, at the precipice of change.

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9781250774125NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.

In a time when our political and cultural perspectives feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment—a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science.

After thinking deeply about how science sees the world and about Earth as a planet, the human brain has the capacity to reset and recalibrates life’s priorities, shaping the actions we might take in response. No outlook on culture, society, or civilization remains untouched.

With crystalline prose, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette that sees and paints the world differently. From insights on resolving global conflict to reminders of how precious it is to be alive, Tyson reveals, with warmth and eloquence, an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by knowledge of our place in the universe.

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The National Book Award-winning author of Felix Ever After delivers a beautifully tender story of two grumpy/sunshine, fake-dating actors navigating their love story both on and offscreen—perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Alexis Hall.

Logan Gray is Hollywood's bad boy—a talented but troubled actor who the public loves to hate. Mattie Cole is an up‑and‑coming golden boy, adored by all but plagued by insecurities.

When Logan and Mattie are cast as leads in a new romantic film, Logan claims that Matt has “zero talent,” sending the film’s publicity into a nosedive. To create positive buzz, the two are persuaded into a fake‑dating scheme—but as the two actors get to know their new characters, real feelings start to develop. 

As public scrutiny intensifies and old wounds resurface, the two must fight for their relationship and their love.
 

Change the way you think about cooking! In this epic guide to better eating, the chef, recipe developer, and video producer Sohla El-Waylly reimagines what a cookbook can be, teaching home cooks of all skill levels how cooking really works.

“The book I wish someone had handed me when I began my own journey as a cook.”—from the Foreword by Samin Nosrat

A practical, information-packed, and transformative guide to becoming a better cook and conquering the kitchen, Start Here is a must-have master class in leveling up your cooking.
Across a dozen technique-themed chapters—from “Temperature Management 101” and “Break it Down & Get Saucy” to “Go to Brown Town,” “All About Butter,” and “Getting to Know Dough”—Sohla El-Waylly explains the hows and whys of cooking, introducing the fundamental skills that you need to become a more intuitive, inventive cook.

A one-stop resource, regardless of what you’re hungry for, Start Here gives equal weight to savory and sweet dishes, with more than two hundred mouthwatering recipes, including:

• Crispy-Skinned Salmon with Radishes & Nuoc Cham
• Charred Lemon Risotto
• Chilled Green Tahini Soba
• Lemon, Pecorino & Potato Pizza
• Fruity-Doodle Cookies
• Masa & Buttermilk Tres Leches

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Social justice leader Tamika D. Mallory states her case for action in this searing indictment of America’s historical, deadly, and continuing assault on Black and brown lives.

From Minneapolis to Louisville, to Portland, Kenosha, and Washington, DC, America’s reckoning with its unmet promises on race and class is at a boiling point not seen since the 1960s. While conversations around pathways to progress take place on social media and cable TV, history tells us that meaningful change only comes with radical legislation and boots-on-the-ground activism. Here, Mallory shares her unique personal experience building coalitions, speaking truth to power, and winning over hearts and minds in the struggle for shared prosperity and safety.

VIRGIL (aka STATIC) can do amazing things with his vast array of electrical abilities, but instantly mending a broken heart isn’t in his skill set.

Virgil Hawkins has just gone through a bad break up. He can’t get over his ex, so his best friend Richie has an idea for how to distract him: attend a music festival in their city of Dakota. But wouldn’t you know it—his ex is in attendance. And that’s just the beginning of his troubles.
 
A series of encounters and events leads to an all-night adventure involving super villains, a diner, a reluctant rapper, and a size-changing kleptomaniac, as well as Virgil’s frequent bad decision making. But in the end, with the help of his friends, Virgil will find he can move on from a broken heart.

An incisive, innovative, and inviting take on fighting oppression and fighting for racial justice.

Racism is a real and present danger. But how can you fight it if you don’t know how it works or where it comes from? Using a compelling mix of memoir, cultural criticism, and anti-oppressive theory, Khodi Dill breaks down how white supremacy functions in North America and gives readers tools to understand how racism impacts their lives. From dismantling internalized racism, decolonizing schools, joining social justice movements and more, Dill lays out paths to personal liberation and social transformation.

Vibrant, dramatic collages by stylo starr complement Dill’s propulsive voice. Fueled by joy and hope as much as by rage and sorrow, this groundbreaking book empowers racialized young people to be confident in their identities and embrace the fullness of their futures.

Twice unlucky in love, natural hair vlogger, Angela Strickland, has settled into a life centered around avoiding men and relationships like the plague. Unwilling to risk another broken heart, she resigns herself to being a perpetually single woman.Corporate man and self-professed womanizer, Ryan Boyé, doesn't believe in relationships or love and thinks anyone who does is a fool. But there's just something about Angela Strickland he can't shake...When these two cross paths, their attraction to one another is undeniable. Will they find that the love they've both evaded is exactly what they both need?

Discover your true power as you embrace the calling God has reserved just for you.

Does the pressure to do more, be more, and achieve more leave you feeling powerless?

In Staying Power, global ministry leader and New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jakes Roberts challenges you to let go of others' expectations and embrace the calling God has for you--with the power only He can give.

In this empowering guided teaching journal, you'll engage with the key themes and messages from Sarah Jakes Roberts' Power Moves, as well as take time for self-reflection through insightful questions and journaling prompts. Drawing on truths from her book, Power Moves, Sarah helps you:

* Bring your authentic self back to life
* Connect with God in new ways
* Disarm the fear that holds you back
* Understand how worthy, valuable, and loved you are
* Release your power to the world

Ideal for personal enrichment and for gifting, this guided journal includes:

* Bible passages for each chapter to help you ground your spirit in Scripture
* Thought-provoking messages from Sarah to stir your soul and inspire you to action
* Questions for self-reflection to help you cultivate personal growth
* Guided prompts to help you explore your experiences and feelings
* Space to write your ideas and insights so you can track your progress and spiritual maturity

Staying Power equips you to align your heart and mind to receive what is already yours. True power rests in authenticity, bravery, and commitment to continuous growth. Come be refilled, restored, and refueled as you harness the power God has reserved just for you

A wide-ranging collection from a rising poet that showcases her sharp, contemporary voice

In Stem, Stella Wong intersperses lyric poems on a variety of subjects with dramatic monologues that imagine the perspectives of specific female composers, musicians, and visual artists, including Johanna Beyer, Mira Calix, Clara Rockmore, Maryanne Amacher, and Delia Derbyshire. In such lines as “let me tell you how I make myself appear / more likeable,” “as I grow older I like looking at chaos,” and “I want to propose a hike / and also propose mostly,” Wong’s style is confident and idiomatic, and by turns contemplative and carefree. Whether writing about family, intimate relationships, language, or women’s experience, Wong creates a world alive with observation and provocation, capturing the essence and the problems of life with others.

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Stepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America.

Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes’s work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of the discovery of America, the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same.

Holnes’s poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their inventiveness, they create a new tradition that blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, and dramatic text. The new legacy he creates is one with significant reverence for the past, which informs a central desire of immigrants and native-born citizens alike: the desire for a better life. Stepmotherland documents an artist’s evolution into manhood and heralds the arrival of a stunning new poetic voice.

In Stigma and Culture, J. Lorand Matory provocatively shows how ethnic identification in the United States—and around the globe—is a competitive and hierarchical process in which populations, especially of historically stigmatized races, seek status and income by dishonoring other stigmatized populations. And there is no better place to see this than among the African American elite in academia, where he explores the emergent ethnic identities of African and Caribbean immigrants and transmigrants, Gullah/Geechees, Louisiana Creoles, and even Native Americans of partly African ancestry.  
           
Matory describes the competitive process that hierarchically structures their self-definition as ethnic groups and the similar process by which middle-class African Americans seek distinction from their impoverished compatriots. Drawing on research at universities such as Howard, Harvard, and Duke and among their alumni networks, he details how university life—while facilitating individual upward mobility, touting human equality, and regaling cultural diversity—also perpetuates the cultural standards that historically justified the dominance of some groups over others. Combining his ethnographic findings with classic theoretical insights from Frantz Fanon, Fredrik Barth, Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu and others—alongside stories from his own life in academia—Matory sketches the university as an institution that, particularly through the anthropological vocabulary of culture, encourages the stigmatized to stratify their own.

A love letter to the Southern biscuit, honoring its place in Black culinary culture and beyond with over 70 delicious recipes.

Still We Rise is a tribute to the glories of flour, butter, and buttermilk baked tall, tender, and flaky. Erika Council is the founder and head baker of the renowned Bomb Biscuit Company in Atlanta, Georgia. The granddaughter of legendary soul food chef Mildred (Mama Dip) Council and a teacher and activist who cooked and baked to support the civil rights movement, Erika knows all about the power of the persistent biscuit.

Here, Erika has perfected traditional biscuit types alongside inventive new creations. Her recipes connect readers to stories of the family, friends, and Southern culinary icons who instilled in her a love of baking.

Through over 70 unique recipes for biscuits, spreads, sandwiches, and a convenient home biscuit mix that will have you whipping up fluffy biscuits and bis-cakes in minutes, Erika takes us on a journey through Black excellence, resilience, and heritage in the American South. Step into her world and enjoy her classic Bomb Buttermilk Biscuit, the lightest Angel Biscuits, and new favorites like Corn Milk Biscuits, Everything “Bagel” Biscuits, Hominy Honey Butter, and the Glori-Fried Chicken Biscuit Sandwich, (plus a mind-blowing Cinnamon Sugar and Pecan Biscuit).

From the author of The Sword and the Shield, this definitive biography of the Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael offers "an unflinching look at an unflinching man" (Daily Beast). 

Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic and controversial Black activist, stepped onto the pages of history when he called for "Black Power" during a speech one Mississippi night in 1966. A firebrand who straddled both the American civil rights and Black Power movements, Carmichael would stand for the rest of his life at the center of the storm he had unleashed. In Stokely, preeminent civil rights scholar Peniel E. Joseph presents a groundbreaking biography of Carmichael, using his life as a prism through which to view the transformative African American freedom struggles of the twentieth century. 

A nuanced and authoritative portrait, Stokely captures the life of the man whose uncompromising vision defined political radicalism and provoked a national reckoning on race and democracy.

A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called “one of the poetry stars of his generation” (Los Angeles Times).

“We sleep long, / if not sound,” Kevin Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, “Till the end/ we sing / into the wind.” In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South—one poem, “Kith,” exploring that strange bedfellow of “kin”—the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. “Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don’t know / are his dead.”
 
Whether it’s the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. Stones becomes an ode to Young’s home places and his dear departed, and to what of them—of us—poetry can save.