In At the Vanguard of Vinyl, Darren Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and production of jazz in the 1950s. The LP’s increased fidelity and playback capacity allowed lengthy compositions and extended improvisations to fit onto a single record, ushering in a period of artistic exploration. Despite these innovations, LP production became another site of negotiating the uneven power relations of a heavily segregated music industry. Exploring how musicians, producers, and other industry professionals navigated these dynamics, Mueller contends that the practice of making LPs significantly changed how jazz was created, heard, and understood in the 1950s and beyond. By attending to the details of audio production, he reveals how Black musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus worked to redefine prevailing notions of race and cultural difference within the United States. Mueller demonstrates that the LP emerges as a medium of sound and culture that maps onto the more expansive sonic terrain of Black modernity in the 1950s.

A radical rethinking of poetics and the negation of borders from more than 40 Latinx poets.

Até Mais: Until More gathers poets from a diverse spectrum of Latinidad, sharing their truths, visions, wonderments, fears, and revelations. Visions of collective futures emerge from a resistance to colonialist projects, displacement, and anti-indigenous settler cultures.

In this anthology, Latinx poets engage in a radical rethinking of what our society can (or cannot) achieve through imagination. Despite/against the presence of borders, the unity enacted within these pages creates a mission of community resistance.

The bookclub meeting will take place on August 31, 2023 at 7:30PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Thursday, August 22 @ 7PM 

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend and RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your book and support Adult Fiction Book Club 

ABOUT LITTLE ROT

One weekend. The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city. A breakup that starts a spiral. A party that goes awry. A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed. Little Rot is a whirling journey through the city’s dark side, told through the eyes of five people, each determined to run from the twisted powers out to destroy them.

Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from his loss, visits a sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, intersect with the three old friends as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt underworld, they’re all looking for a way out of the trouble they’ve instigated, driven by loss and fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them. They careen madly in the face of the poison of power, sexual violence, murder, betrayals. Little Rot tests how far these five will go to save each other—or themselves—when confronted by evil, culminating in a shattering denouement.

With each novel, with each creation, Akwaeke Emezi shows their genius as a storyteller, as a visionary force who has created a thrilling tale of sex, power, and deviance in Little Rot. You won’t be able to look away.

 BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, August 20 @ 7PM 

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend the book club meeting and RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your book and support Non Fiction Book Club 

ABOUT BLACK AF HISTORY

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, August 13 @ 7PM 

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend and RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your book and support Romance Book Club 

ABOUT CURVY GIRL SUMMER

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?

Join us for our monthly book club. Our August pick The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Secret Lives.

Book club will happen Wednesday, August 31 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. RSVP required. See ya'll there!

About the Book

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.

There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta’s “same time next year” arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.

With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.

Join us for our monthly young adult book club. Our August pick is the Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle. 

The book club meeting will be August 28 at 2 PM in our Kindred Stories Reading Garden. RSVP required. See ya'll there!

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

B is for Baby. B is for Brother. B is for going to see Baba!

One morning after breakfast, Baby’s big brother is getting ready to take the basket of bananas all the way to Baba’s bungalow in the next village. He’ll have to go along the bumpy road, past the baobab trees, birds, and butterflies, and all the way over the bridge. But what he doesn’t realize is that his very cute, very curious baby sibling has stowed away on his bicycle! Little ones learning about language will love sounding out the words in this playful, vibrantly illustrated story set in West Africa.

Ships in 7-10 business days

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy’s deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack. For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he’s entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany’s vast and singular talent.

*ships in 7-10 business days*

From Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winner Kadir Nelson comes a transcendent tale about a lost little bear searching for home.

Baby Bear is lost and trying to find his way home. As he walks through the forest, he encounters a number of animals that share wise counsel.

Trust yourself.

Listen to your heart.

Keep walking and you will find your way home.

As each encounter moves Baby Bear farther along his path, he gains courage, a feeling that he is loved, and the profound sense that he is not alone.

With poetic text and stunning illustrations, Baby Bear is a powerful addition to the canon of timeless picture book classics.

NBA champion Jayson Tatum scores with this hilarious tale of a baby turned basketball superstar!

Inspired by Jayson Tatum’s life as both an NBA superstar and a loving dad, this laugh-out-loud picture book is the story of what happens when a tot becomes an NBA teammate. Coathored by Sam Apple and featuring Parker-Nia Gordon’s sweet and appealing art, Baby Dunks-a-Lot is “delightful . . .silly and sporty in equal measure” (Kirkus).

When a big kid teaches his little brother how to play basketball for the first time, something unusual happens . . . baby bro flies through the air for a monster dunk! Before long, every professional team wants the incredible dunking baby on their roster. Baby Dunks-A-Lot is poised to become a basketball legend—that is, until he misses his bedtime.

The Boss Baby meets Space Jam in Jayson Tatum’s debut picture book, Baby Dunks-a-Lot!

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

When Baby and Mama go to the market, Baby is so adorable that the banana seller gives him six bananas. Baby eats one and puts five in the basket, but Mama doesn’t notice. As Mama and Baby wend their way through the stalls, cheeky Baby collects five oranges, four biscuits, three ears of sweet corn, two pieces of coconut…until Mama notices that her basket is getting very heavy! Poor Baby, she thinks, he must be very hungry by now! Rhythmic language, visual humor, and a bounty of delectable food make this a tale that is sure to whet little appetites for story time.

Discover the easy way to teach sign language to babies and toddlers ages 0 to 3 with this guide.

Sign language is a fun and effective way for babies to communicate without words while developing essential early learning skills but we understanding knowing where to start can be a challenge. This book of sign language for babies and toddlers makes it easy to help your child learn, with 101 useful, everyday ASL signs and a clear, simple format that explains what signs are best to start with and tips for teaching them. Whether it's asking for milk or telling you that they're tired, you'll learn how to give your baby the tools to tell you what they're thinking.

* BABY SIGN LANGUAGE BASICS: Get an overview of what baby sign language is and how it can help you and your child connect, as well as how it can aid in their development.

* HOW TO TEACH SIGNS: Find guidance for getting started, capturing your baby's attention, and when to add more signs based on their age and progress.

* EASY ORGANIZATION: Each chapter is organized by topics like mealtime, getting dressed, playtime, animals, and feelings, so it's quick to find the signs you are looking for.

Start communicating early with a sign language book for babies that makes it simple.

Created in the spirit of Nina Simone’s song “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” meet figureheads, leaders and pioneers such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, as well as cultural trailblazers like Zadie Smith and athletes like Serena Williams. Jamia Wilson has carefully curated this range of Black icons and the book is stylishly brought together by Andrea Pippins’ colorful and celebratory illustrations.

“With a shimmering radiance and gentle tone, this title will be welcome in every children’s collection.” —School Library Journal

Baby, happy baby, I’ll sing down the stars
till they dance right into your room.

It’s bedtime for a drowsy little one, and the whole family takes turns cuddling and singing this sleepy baby to bed. One by one the baby’s sister, grandmother, father, and mother call on the winds, the clouds, the stars, and the moon to sail and rock and delight their little one until dreams take over. Author Atinuke and illustrator Angela Brooksbank reunite for this gentle picture book—based on a song that Atinuke’s father sang to her in Nigeria—to evoke the warmth and tenderness of wrapping a child in nighttime’s embrace and celebrate the moments families share with their sleepy babies at bedtime.

The Be Rooted Undated Planner is a perfect companion for setting goals, tracking progress, and prioritizing self-care. With gold spiral binding and a smooth hardcover adorned with beautiful artwork, it offers guided pages to help you stay focused and organized. Keep your inner flame burning bright with this empowering planner. •

HARDCOVER SPIRAL PLANNER: Take on the world with our Hardcover Spiral Planner, designed to be your trusty companion wherever life leads. Its durable soft-touch hardcover with a stunning gold spiral bind is built to last so you can stay organized and conquer the day, every day. • UNDATED PAGES: Enjoy complete flexibility with undated pages designed to guide you and help keep track of your daily to-do list and thoughts. 

A sexy, propulsive novel that confronts the limits of empathy and the perils of appropriation through the eyes of a disgraced small-town librarian.

Now that her brilliant botanist daughter is off at college, buttoned-up Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at a quiet Maine public library more than anything. But when a teenager accuses Maeve―Maeve!―of spying on her romantic escapades in the mezzanine bathroom, she winds up laid off and humiliated. Stuck at home in a tailspin, Maeve cares for the mysterious plants in her daughter’s greenhouse while obsessing over the clearly troubled girl at the source of the rumor. She hopes to have a powerful ally in her attempts to clear her name: her favorite author, Harrison Riddles, who has finally responded to her adoring letters and accepted an invitation to speak at the library.

Riddles, meanwhile, arrives in town with his own agenda. He announces a plan to write a novel about another young library patron, Sudanese refugee Willie, and enlists Maeve’s help in convincing him to participate. Maeve wants to look out for Willie, but Riddles’s charisma and the sheen of literary glory he promises are difficult to resist. A scheme to get her job back draws Maeve further into Riddles’s universe―where shocking questions about sex, morality, and the purpose of literature threaten to upend her orderly life.

A writer of “savage compassion” (Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer), Sarah Braunstein constructs a shrewd, page-turning caper that explores one woman’s search for agency and ultimate reckoning with the kind of animal she is.

*ships in 7-10 business days

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love. Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism and hip-hop intersect.

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay

“Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.”

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

New York Times Bestseller

From Roxane Gay comes this collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation—now available in a limited Olive Edition.

“Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.”

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

“Roxane Gay is the brilliant girl-next-door: your best friend and your sharpest critic. . . . She is by turns provocative, chilling, hilarious; she is also required reading.”—People

Gritty and unflinching, yet also tender, fantastical, and funny, a trans woman’s tale about finding a community on the margins. In Sarmiento Park, the green heart of Córdoba, a group of trans sex workers make their nightly rounds. When a cry comes from the dark, their leader, the 178-year-old Auntie Encarna, wades into the brambles to investigate and discovers a baby half dead from the cold. She quickly rallies the pack to save him, and they adopt the child into their fascinating surrogate family as they have so many other outcasts, including Camila. Sheltered in Auntie Encarna’s fabled pink house, they find a partial escape from the everyday threats of disease and violence, at the hands of clients, cops, and boyfriends. Telling their stories—of a mute young woman who transforms into a bird, of a Headless Man who fled his country’s wars—as well as her own journey from a toxic home in a small, poor town, Camila traces the life of this vibrant community throughout the 90s. Imbuing reality with the magic of a dark fairy tale, Bad Girls offers an intimate, nuanced portrait of trans coming-of-age that captures a universal sense of the strangeness of our bodies. It grips and entertains us while also challenging ideas about love, sexuality, gender, and identity.

Set in a diner where the food isn't very good and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, this bestselling novel from the author of Mama Day and The Women of Brewster Place is a feast for the senses and the spirit. "A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humor."--New York Times Book Review.

“To be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all of the time.” James A. Baldwin

1.75 inches tall

Soft enamel with black metal plating. 

Comes with 2 rubber pin backs. 

"One of the great overlooked luminaries of American picture-making." –The New Yorker

In 1983, Baldwin Lee (born 1951) left his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his 4 × 5 view camera and set out on the first of a series of road trips to photograph the American South. The subjects of his pictures were Black Americans: at home, at work and at play, in the street and in nature. This project would consume Lee—a first-generation Chinese American—for the remainder of that decade, and it would forever transform his perception of his country, its people, and himself. The resulting archive from this seven-year period contains nearly 10,000 black-and-white negatives. This monograph, *Baldwin Lee*, presents a selection of 88 images edited by the photographer Barney Kulok, accompanied by an interview with Lee by the curator Jessica Bell Brown and an essay by the writer Casey Gerald. Arriving almost four decades after Lee began his journey, this publication reveals the artist’s unique commitment to picturing life in America and, in turn, one of the most piercing and poignant bodies of work of its time.

The New York Times bestselling author of Wench returns to the Civil War era to explore the next chapter of history—the trauma of the War and the end of slavery—in this powerful story of love and healing about three people who struggle to overcome the pain of the past and define their own future.

The Civil War has ended, and Madge, Sadie, and Hemp have each come to Chicago in search of a new life.

Born with magical hands, Madge has the power to discern others’ suffering, but she cannot heal her own damaged heart. To mend herself and help those in need, she must return to Tennessee to face the women healers who rejected her as a child.

Sadie can commune with the dead, but until she makes peace with her father, she, too, cannot fully engage her gift.

Searching for his missing family, Hemp arrives in this northern city that shimmers with possibility. But redemption cannot be possible until he is reunited with those taken from him.

In the bitter aftermath of a terrible, bloody war, as a divided nation tries to come together once again, Madge, Sadie, and Hemp will be caught up in a desperate, unexpected battle for survival in a community desperate to lay the pain of the past to rest.

Beautiful in its historical atmosphere and emotional depth, Balm is a stirring novel of love, loss, hope, and reconciliation set during one of the most critical periods in American history.